In a display of extra-ordinary courage, the conductor of the bus attacked by Islamic State militants in Pakistan's Karachi city today drove the vehicle to a hospital with the dead and the injured, despite being himself wounded.
Rana M Razzaq, a security coordinator at the Memon Medical Centre, where the injured were taken, told reporters that the conductor drove the bus himself as the driver was shot dead.
The conductor, who was injured, reached the hospital with 43 bodies while two injured persons later passed away during treatment.
In the latest cold-blooded sectarian violence in Pakistan targeting the minority Shia community, six to eight bike-borne assailants opened fire indiscriminately at the bus.
There were more than 60 people in the bus when it was attacked. The attackers killed 45 people -- 26 men and 17 women -- and wounded more than 20 before fleeing from the scene, police said.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the grisly attack and said they gunned down 43 people.
It was the first official claim of responsibility by the IS leadership of an attack in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region.
Image: Ambulances and people gather gather outside the hospital after an attack on a bus in Karachi. Photograph: Akhtar Soomro/Reuters
