Six people killed in mortar attack

QUETTA:

Six members of a family were killed after a stray mortar shell hit their house in Hairdin village in Sohbatpur tehsil of Jaffarabad district on the night between Friday and Saturday.

“Four mortars were fired from an unspecific location. One of them hit a house in Hairdin village at 1:45 am. A man, his wife and their four daughters were killed instantly,” SHO Muneem Khosa told The Express Tribune.

The area shares its border with the restive Dera Bugti district. Khosa said that mortars were fired from the Bugti tribal territory while other police officials accused insurgent groups of shelling the populated area.

Later, residents of the area took out a rally and held a protest demonstration with the bodies on national highway.

The protesters alleged that security forces and agencies had fired the mortar shells that caused the deaths. As a result of the protest, traffic on the national highway was disrupted for more than ten hours causing a jam on both sides of the highway. However, the protesters called off their strike after police officials assured them that the assailants would soon be caught.

Meanwhile, at least four employees of the National Transmission Dispatched Company (NTDC) were injured in a landmine explosion in Nasirabad district while a gas pipeline was blown up in Dera Bugti on Saturday.

The workers of NTDC were on their way to Chatter for repairing two damaged power pylons which were blown up two days earlier, when their vehicle hit a landmine placed along the road.

Four employees, including the NTDC executive engineer, suffered splinter wounds while their vehicle was completely damaged as a result of the explosion. The injured were taken to Civil Hospital Dera Murad Jamali. Security forces later recovered another landmine from the area and defused it, officials said.

Also, unidentified men blew up a gas pipeline, 24 inches in diameter, in Mohamad Colony of the Datwani area in Dera Bugti. The attack partially affected gas supply to Punjab.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 13^th, 2011.