Kharotabad killings: Envoy says slain foreigners were from Dagestan

Funeral of two women and a man held; relatives could not be traced.

QUETTA:

A Russian diplomat on Thursday identified two women and a man who were among five foreigners shot dead in Kharotabad on May 17 as residents of Dagestan, a semi-autonomous Muslim region in the Russian Federation.

“The deceased belonged to Dagestan. We could not locate their relatives,” Russian Consul General Andrey V Damidov told reporters. “The victims had no affiliation with any religious organisation”.

The deceased were identified as K H A Magova, A D Sharapudinova and A A Magomedov.

He further said that he had complete faith and confidence in the judicial tribunal formed to investigate the incident.

Earlier he visited the morgue of the Bolan Medical Complex and identified the three bodies, which were almost decomposed.

The Russian consul general had granted permission to Al-Khidmat Foundation for the burial after the Russian government was unable to trace the relatives of the three victims.

Hundreds of people attended the funeral prayers of the three foreigners.

Five foreigners, including three women, were gunned down by paramilitary troops and police personnel in Kharotabad, a suburb of Quetta.

The police had alleged that they were suicide bombers. However, the bomb disposal squad and post-mortem reports revealed that the suspects were neither wearing suicide jackets, nor did they possess explosive material at the time of the attack.

The remaining three bodies were buried in the Jabal-i-Noor al Quran graveyard in Quetta. The funeral prayers were led by the provincial chief of Jamaat-i-Islami (JI), Akhundzada Abdul Matin.

Earlier, the bodies of Olga, a Russian national, and her Tajik husband Nauman were buried at the same graveyard in Quetta.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 24^th, 2011.