The churchgoers were on their way home in Quetta, the capital of Pakistan’s province of Balochistan, when two men on a motorcycle began shooting at them, local police official Ataullah Shah said.

Eight wounded were taken to hospital and two people were pronounced dead.

Television pictures showed members of Quetta’s Christian community burning car and bicycle tyres while protesting the shooting.

At the hospital, people screamed and cried as the two bodies were brought in on a stretcher covered with white sheets.

Balochistan, a region bordering Iran and Afghanistan, is plagued by violence by Sunni Islamist sectarian groups linked to the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and the Islamic State. It also has an insurgency started by people of Baloch descent fighting the central government.

The Islamic State has created a branch in Pakistan and Afghanistan in recent years mostly by recruiting among established militants. Its followers have claimed some of Pakistan’s most deadly recent attacks.

This month four members of a Christian family were gunned down in Quetta a day after Easter in what police officials called a “targeted attack”.

In December two suicide bombers stormed a packed church in southwestern Pakistan, killing at least 10 people and wounding up to 56. The Islamic State claimed both attacks.