Pakistani town in uproar after 40 Shi'ites gunned down in bus convoy

Angry crowds gathered in the remote Pakistani mountain town of Parachinar on Friday, incensed by an attack on an escorted convoy of buses in which 40 Shi'ite Muslims died after being sprayed with automatic fire in an ambush.

The Parachinar district, on Pakistan's northwestern border with Afghanistan, has frequently experienced violence between its Sunni and Shi'ite Muslim communities over land and power. Travellers to and from the town ride in convoys escorted by security officials.

The region's Shi'ites, who are in the minority in the predominantly Sunni Muslim nation of 241 million, have also been attacked by Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) Sunni Islamist militants, who consider them heretics.

Local official Javedullah Mehsud said the death toll from the attack had risen to 40, including eight women, and that 29 people were being treated in hospital, nine of them in critical condition. He and a hospital medical officer said all the dead were Shi'ites.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

Mehsud said two Sunnis had been killed in reprisal attacks.

All markets, education institutions, transport and other businesses in the town of Parachinar were closed, residents said.

A police officer who asked not to be named said hundreds of angry citizens had gathered in the main bazaar, and that the situation was highly volatile.

One of the wounded, Jamshed Hussain, said by phone from a hospital bed that he had been travelling in the convoy of around 100 vehicles accompanied by police.

He said some of those travelling in the convoy had stopped and attacked it, starting with the escort, spraying the vehicles with bullets from both sides.

"We don't know them but they were armed with rifles and they stopped the vehicles and started firing on the passengers from a close distance," Hussain said.