QUETTA: Gunmen today assassinated a renowned Pakistani educationist in Baluchistan, where violence has recently spiked in the southwest region on the Afghan and Iranian borders, police said.

Fazle Bari, principal of private boys’ college Tameer-e-Nau, was killed

in the drive-by shooting

as he travelled to work in

his car through the Baluchistan capital Quetta, senior police official Tariq Manzoor told AFP.

“Bari died on the spot

and his driver was wounded,” Manzoor said, linking the attack to a recent

wave of unrest and “targeted killings.”

Some 250 students blocked a main road during a march towards the residence of the Baluchistan governor to protest against the killing, prompting police to fire tear gas to disperse the crowd, an AFP reporter said.

A bomb planted under

a rickshaw later exploded near a paramilitary

checkpoint in Quetta, killing a pedestrian and wounding three others,

senior police official Hamid Shakeel told AFP.

“A nearby Frontier Corp checkpost could have been the target,” he said.