Gunmen attacked a bus carrying members of a religious minority in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi on Wednesday, killing 41 people.
The bus was carrying men, women and children from the Ismaili Muslim community, said Ahmed Chinoy, chairman of the Citizen Police Liaison Committee in Karachi.
Followers of Ismailism, a Shiite sect, are persecuted by extremists and often face apostasy and blasphemy charges.
Karachi, in Pakistan’s Sindh province, is the country’s largest and most populous city.
Those killed in the attack Wednesday comprised 16 women and 25 men, Chinoy said.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the killings.
Shiites are regularly the victims of sectarian attacks in Sunni-majority Pakistan.
A bombing in January at a Shiite mosque in the city of Shikarpur, which is also in Sindh province, killed scores of people. That attack was claimed by Jundallah, an extremist group that targets Shiites.
An attack in February on a Shiite mosque in the northwestern city of Peshawar killed at least 19 people and injured dozens of others. The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for those killings.
