Unidentified gunmen on Wednesday killed five people in Pakistan’s troubled southwest in an apparently ethnically motivated attack, police said.

Unidentified gunmen on Wednesday killed five people in Pakistan's troubled southwest in an apparently ethnically motivated attack, police said.

The incident took place late Wednesday in a market in the central part of Quetta.

Senior police official Aitzaz Goraya told AFP that two gunmen on motorbike opened fire on two shops in the market, killing four shopkeepers on the spot and critically wounding three others.

One among the injured later succumbed to his injuries in hospital, Rashid Jamali, a doctor in the government-run hospital, told AFP.

"(The) condition of another shopkeeper is also critical and he is undergoing surgery," Jamali said.

Goraya said one of the injured was from the minority Hindu community.

"We are investigating but apparently it is an ethnically motivated attack," Goraya said.

No group has yet claimed responsibility but Baluch separatists are active in the area. They often attack government forces, installations and people who have settled in Baluchistan from central Punjab province.