Quetta shootings: Gunmen kill 5 in attacks targeted at ‘settlers’

All but one victim hailed from Punjab; DPO’s convoy ambushed in Turbat

QUETTA:

At least five people, including a Hindu vendor and teenaged boy, were killed and two others critically wounded in a targeted shooting Wednesday evening. Apart from the Hindu vendor, all the victims are said to be settlers from Punjab, and police said it could be a targeted attack.

According to an official of the Gwalmandi police, masked men riding on motorcycles targeted a barbershop, a tailor shop and a vendor on Usman Road area of Quetta. Four people died on the spot and three others were injured.



“The gunmen barged into the shops and opened fire,” said Ghulam Yasin, a barber who received a gunshot wound to his leg. The attackers managed to flee unidentified and unchallenged. Rescuers and residents in the neighbourhood shifted the casualties to the Provincial Sandeman Hospital before the police reached the crime scene.

“We received four bodies and three injured people,” Muhammad Jaffar, the medico legal officer at the Provincial Sandeman Hospital said. “All the victims were shot in the head. One injured expired during treatment while another is being treated,” he told reporters.

The dead have been identified as Hindu vendor Sunil Jani, Khalid Billa, Irfan, 14-year-old Shakir and Naveed Qureshi. “They were shopkeepers and passersby,” a senior police official said. “The shopkeepers were settlers,” he added.Capital City Police Officer Abdul Razzaq Cheema suspended Nasirul Hassan, the SHO of Gwalmandi police station, and sought an explanation from DSP Syed Tanveer Shah over the killings. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the killings but Baloch separatists frequently carry out such attacks.

Separately, gunmen shot dead a tribal elder in the Ornach area of Khuzdar district Wednesday. The motive behind Malik Qasim’s murder could not be ascertained immediately. The killers managed to flee the scene unidentified and unchallenged.

Elsewhere in the troubled province, militants ambushed the convoy of the DPO Turbat Abid Baloch while he was returning after setting up a police station in Tump – but luckily no one was hurt, according to Deputy Commissioner Mumtaz Baloch.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 13^th, 2014.