At least 23 people including several Shi'ite pilgrims have been killed in a gun and suicide attack on the restive Pakistan-Iran border.
The attack came when a bus carrying Pakistani pilgrims returning from a visit to holy Muslim sites in Iran stopped at a restaurant in the Pakistani town of Taftan late on Sunday night.
"So far we can confirm 23 people killed including several Shi'ite pilgrims and security personal. Seven others are injured," Akbar Durrani, home secretary of Pakistan's southwest Baluchistan province, said.
"Four attackers including two gunmen and two suicide bombers attacked the restaurant in Taftan," he added.
No group has come forward to claim the attack. Two devastating bombings in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan, killed nearly 200 people last year and were claimed by banned Sunni extremist organisation Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), which has links to al-Qaeda.
Nearly 1000 Shi'ites have been killed in the past two years in Pakistan, a heavy toll on the community that makes up roughly 20 per cent of the country's population of 180 million, which is predominantly Muslim.
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