Unidentified militants in military uniform shot dead at least 22 passengers after storming two Karachi-bound buses in Pakistan’s restive Balochistan province, triggering widespread protests from Pashtuns.

Suspected to be Baloch separatists, 20-25 militants stopped the buses ferrying over 30 passengers, mostly Pashtuns, in southwestern Mastung district last night when they were heading to Karachi from Quetta and Pishin.

According to a survivor, the gunmen asked the passengers to come out and they obeyed the instructions, thinking they were military personnel.

The gunmen kidnapped about 30 passengers and later killed at least 22 of them, officials and media reports said.

At least two of the militants were on Saturday killed in a massive operation mounted by the Frontier Corps (FC) and levies personnel in the Khadkochay area of the Mastung district to hunt down the gunmen and had recovered six passengers from the mountains, an FC official said.

Balochistan Home Minister Sarfaraz Bugti told PTI that unidentified gunmen around 20 to 25 in number came in heavy vehicles and stopped the buses.

“They got the passengers out of the buses and kidnapped around 30 of them releasing five of them later on but started killing the rest after the (military) operation began,” he said.

The gunmen fled into the mountains, leaving the bodies behind which were recovered by security forces and rescue teams, Bugti said, adding that a search for the rest was on.

No particular group has claimed responsibility for the attack but security forces suspect Baloch separatists were involved. A survivor told a TV channel that militants verified the ethnicity of kidnapped men through national identity cards and killed the Pashtun passengers while sparing the Baloch.

Relatives of those killed and kidnapped in Friday’s incident staged a sit-in outside the Governor House in Quetta, demanding justice and a military operation in the province.