Ethnic killings: Eight poultry workers shot dead in Lasbela

Two local workers were released after gunmen checked their identities.

QUETTA: Gunmen forced their way into a poultry farm in the Abbas Goth area of Lasbela district and abducted 11 labourers on Sunday morning.

Eight labourers were shot dead and one man was injured after their captors confirmed their ethnicity, while the other two men who turned out to be Baloch were released, officials said.

“Militants barged into a poultry farm in Sakran area and abducted 11 labourers,” senior police officer Mazhar Nawaz Shaikh said, adding that the victims were questioned over their ethnicities before being shot dead.

He added that police recovered eight bullet-riddled bodies and a wounded worker in the mountainous range behind the Attock Cement Factory.

Deputy Commissioner Fawad Ghaffar revealed that the militants blindfolded the eight workers belonging to Punjab and shot them while setting the two Baloch workers free.

“Initial investigations show that the labourers were killed because they belonged to Punjab,” he said.

Medics at Jam Ghulam Qadir Hospital in Hub confirmed that bodies bore multiple bullet wounds.  “Eight bodies bearing multiple bullet wounds and an injured were brought here,” they said.

Recounting their harrowing ordeal, one of the workers, who escaped unhurt, said: “We were inside the poultry farm when several armed men stormed in.”

“They checked our ID cards,” he said, adding that two labourers were spared because they were local residents.

In a statement issued on Sunday, Balochistan Chief Minister Dr Abdul Malik Baloch condemned the attack and vowed to bring the perpetrators to justice.

“Law enforcing agencies should arrest the culprits involved in this heinous crime,” Baloch asserted.

The victims were residents of Sadiqabad, Muzaffargarh, and other towns of Punjab province. So far, no one has claimed responsibility for the incident.

Balochistan’s seven million inhabitants have long complained they do not receive a fair share of its gas and mineral wealth.

Baloch nationalists also chafe at the outside influence of Punjab, and the influx of migrant workers from other parts of the country.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 20^th, 2014.