Two killed in Turbat drive-by shooting

QUETTA: Two persons were killed in a drive-by shooting in Turbat district of Balochistan on Wednesday, officials said.

Masked gunmen riding on a motorcycle opened indiscriminate fire at a barber shop located near the Gwadar bus terminal in Turbat Town, official sources said. As a result, the barber, identified as Hasnain Ali, died on the spot and a passerby received multiple bullet wounds. The attackers managed to escape before a police team arrived at the scene. Police rushed the injured to hospital where he expired during the course of treatment. “It is a case of targeted killing,” a senior police official told The Express Tribune. In other violence, an army soldier and a policeman were killed in two separate incidents in the districts of Khuzdar and Dera Murad Jamali.

Armed men intercepted a passenger van in the Zehri area of Khuzdar and asked Muhammad Hussain, a Pakistan Army soldier in civvies, to get off the vehicle. As soon as he alighted, the men shot him dead and fled the scene. Local authorities shifted the body to the Khuzdar divisional headquarters hospital for a post-mortem examination. Sources said Hussain was going to Khuzdar to rejoin his unit after spending his leave at home. “Hussain was killed over an old enmity,” a senior levies officer said.

However, he added that they were investigating the matter. Separately, gunmen shot dead a policeman near a bus terminal in Dera Murad Jamali on Wednesday morning. The motive behind Somar Khan’s murder could not be ascertained. However, police registered a case and started investigations.

Published in the Express Tribune, May 27th, 2010.