Senior official slain in Quetta shooting

QUETTA: A senior government official was killed and his son and a pedestrian were wounded in a shooting incident in the Kasi road neighbourhood of the provincial capital on Friday. Another four more people were killed in violence elsewhere in the province during the last 24 hours.

Police said Muhammad Idris Sheikh, Additional Secretary at the ministry of food, was sitting at the General Store of his son, Aizaz Ali, on Kasi Road when gunmen barged into the shop and opened indiscriminate fire. As a result Sheikh was killed on the spot and his son and a pedestrian were wounded.

Police and Edhi volunteers ferried the dead and the injured to the Civil Hospital. Sheikh’s body was handed over to his heirs after medico-legal formalities, while his son is being treated for his wounds which, doctors say, are not life threatening. The assailants fled the scene unchallenged. Police have registered a case and mounted a manhunt for the killers.

Separately, gunmen barged into a house in the Pashtoonabad neighbourhood of Quetta on Friday and shot dead a man, identified as Noor Ali Shah. The motive behind the killing was not known.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 8^th, 2011.