At least 41 people – including women and children – were killed after unidentified gunmen opened fire on a convoy of 200 passenger vehicles passing through a remote area in Pakistan.
The area’s deputy police commissioner said the vehicles were attacked while passing through the Kurram tribal district in Pakistan, near the Afghan border.
A provincial spokesman said in a statement that the gunmen initially targeted the police escort.
Police are protecting the convoy after months of sectarian violence in the area, which left dozens dead this year.
Police told the BBC that 41 people were killed in Thursday’s attack and a further 16 were seriously injured.
Nadeem Aslam Chaudhry, chief secretary of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, told Reuters news agency that the attack was “a huge tragedy”, with the death toll “likely to rise”.
Saeeda Bano – who was in the middle of the convoy – described to BBC Urdu that she feared she would be killed as she hid under the car seat with her children during the attack.
When the gunfire stopped after a few minutes, she saw wounded people and bodies lying on the road.
Details of what happened are still emerging, but Javed ullah Mehsud, a senior government official, told AFP that “about 10 attackers” were involved, “firing indiscriminately from both sides of the road”.
Women and children hid in nearby houses while police searched for the attackers, he added.
He said in an earlier statement that most of the passengers traveling with the convoy through the mountainous region were Shia.
Sunni and Shia Muslim tribes have clashed several times this year. According to Reuters news agency, a series of previous attacks ended after a tribal council called for a ceasefire.
Then last month, another attack on passenger vehicles along a road in the area left 15 people dead.
The road on which Thursday’s convoy was traveling was only reopened in recent days, with travel restricted to convoys with police protection.
Sectarian violence is often linked to land disputes in the region.
However, Kurram, in northwest Pakistan, also borders several Afghan provinces that are home to anti-Shia militant groups, including the Islamic State group and Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).
