Over 300,000 fled violence-hit Balochistan: Pak rights body

More than 300,000 people, including minority Shias and Hindus, have fled Pakistan's troubled southwestern province of Balochistan due to unrest in the last 10 years, a rights body said today.
Tahir Hussain Khan, president of the Balochistan chapter of Pakistan's Human Rights Commission said majority of the 200,000 leaving the province are religio-ethnic Shia Hazaras who are targeted by the Sunni Lashkar-e-Jhangvi extremist group.
Those fleeing the militancy-plagued region include religious minorities like Shias and Hindus as well as ethnic Hazaras, Punjabis and Urdu-speaking people.
Hazaras are followed by about 90,000 Punjabi and Urdu-speaking settlers in Balochistan who are regularly attacked by Baloch nationalists.

"The total number of people who left in a decade is over 300,000," Khan said.
Around 10,000 Hindus, 300 Parsis and 400 people from the minority Zikri sect have also fled the violence. The Hindus have mostly settled in Sindh and its capital Karachi.
Balochistan has been hit by an insurgency for over a decade as nationalists allege that the federal government is exploiting the resource-rich but poverty-stricken province.
The nationalist violence has been compounded by the presence of extremist militants who attack their opponents with vengeance.