QUETTA: At least 11 people were gunned down by unknown assailants in two separate terror incidents in Nushki district of Balochistan, Geo News reported on Saturday.
Nine of the deceased, who hailed from Punjab, were travelling in a bus on the National Highway from Quetta to Taftan when they were stopped by unknown attackers, pulled out of the bus and abducted. The police launched a search operation for the abductees, however, their bodies were found under the bridge near a hill. All of them had been shot dead.
The murdered men belonged to the Mandi Bahauddin, Wazirabad and Gujranwala areas of Punjab. According to Nushki Superintendent of Police (SP) Allah Bukhsh, the deceased men were labourers.
Nushki Teaching Hospital MS Dr Zafar Mengal said the murdered men had been shot in various parts of their bodies. The police said that six people belonged to Mandi Bahauddin and hailed from the same village Chak Fateh Shah. Their family members said the men had left for Iraq three days before Eid. In another incident, two people were gunned down while three others sustained injuries, said the police.
Nushki Deputy Commissioner Habibullah Musakhel said over a dozen militants blocked the Quetta-Nushki-Taftan N-40 National Highway at the hilly point of Sultan Chadhai, which is around 1 kilometre away from Nushki, on Friday night.
DC Musakhel said after blocking the highway, the armed men started checking the vehicles and opened fire on a vehicle that did not stop, killing one of the men who was a relative of a member provincial assembly.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has strongly condemned the incident of killing of bus passengers in Nushki. The Prime Minister said: “We stand with the bereaved families in this hour of grief.” He said the perpetrators of the incident of terrorism and their facilitators will be punished. He sought a report into the incident. The Prime Minister reaffirmed commitment to wipe out the menace of terrorism.