No let-up in Balochistan target killings

Five people, including three labourers and local leader of religious party, killed in separate incidents of firing.

QUETTA: Five people, including three labourers and the local leader of a religious party, were killed in separate incidents of firing in different parts of Balochistan on Monday.

At least 10 labourers were sleeping in a camp near a Levies check post in the Killi Sher Jan area of Kohlu district when armed men opened fire on them.  As a result, three labourers – Kamal, Abdul Qadir and Allahuddin – died on the spot and three others sustained bullet injuries. The casualties were shifted to a nearby state-run hospital.

The victims were working on the construction of power transmission lines in the area. Workers and engineers had also been attacked in the past in the Marri Tribal Agency as a section of the local society is opposed to such work. Deputy Commissioner Nasrullah Rind told journalists that Levies personnel were present when miscreants opened fire on the laboueres. And they fled the scene after retaliatory firing from Levies guards. He said they have mounted a manhunt for the culprits.

Azad Baloch, the spokesperson for the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), claimed responsibility for the attack in a telephone call to media outlets in Quetta. “Such attacks will continue,” he said.

Separately, chief of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam in Zhob district, Sheikh Muhammad Ayub Mandokhel, was gunned down outside his home on Monday morning. Gunmen riding on a motorbike opened fire on Mandokhel when he stepped out of his home for a morning walk. He sustained several bullet wounds to his upper torso and was rushed to a nearby hospital where doctors pronounced him dead on arrival. “It was a case of target killing and investigations are under way,” an official told The Express Tribune.

Separately, unidentified gunmen shot dead a clerk at the Deputy Commissioner Office in Mastung Town.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 26^th, 2010.