Pakistan: Government spokesman shot dead

Quetta: Police say gunmen killed a provincial government spokesman in southwest Pakistan in an apparent sectarian attack and then shot to death two nearby policemen. Police official Hamid Shakeel says the attackers shot dead Khadim Hussain Noori on Monday in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province.

Noori was the provincial spokesman and also a Shiite Muslim. Shakeel says the gunmen killed two policemen and wounded a third as they were speeding away on a motorcycle.

Baluchistan has experienced a spike in sectarian killings in the past year as radical Sunni Muslims have targeted Shiites, who they consider heretics. The province is also the scene of a decades-long insurgency by Baluch nationalists who demand greater autonomy and a larger share of the province's natural resources.