Quetta: In a harrowing incident, seven labourers were shot dead in Pakistan's Balochistan province and one other injured on Thursday by unknown gunmen while they were sleeping in their residential quarters in Surbandar, Gwadar, according to Dawn. The police said the labourers worked at a barber shop in Surbandar and belonged from the Punjab province.
Balochistan Chief Minister Sarfraz Bugti condemned the killing of the workers and called it an act of "open terrorism". He expressed his condolences to their families and vowed all possible support. "We will chase after terrorists and their facilitators,” he said, adding that there is no soft corner for them in Pakistan.
Gwadar Police Station Station House Officer (SHO) Mohsin Ali told Geo News that terrorists attacked residential quarters near Fish Harbour Jetty in Sarband, Gwadar and opened indiscriminate fire. Ali further said the dead bodies and the injured individual have all been shifted to the Gwadar Hospital.
“Every single drop of the blood of Pakistanis will be accounted for,” said Bugti. Balochistan Home Minister Mir Zia Ullah Langau also said the terrorists will be dealt with strictly. “The killing of innocent labourers is a cowardly act,” he said, adding that the terrorists will be brought to justice.
11 killed in Balochistan last month
The incident occurred almost a month after 11 people, including nine passengers, were gunned down by unknown militants in two separate incidents in the restive Balochistan province. Armed men stopped a bus on a highway in Noshki district and kidnapped nine men at gunpoint on April 12, said police.
The travellers were stopped on the National Highway from Quetta to Taftan in the province and were abducted. The police launched a search operation and found their bodies under a bridge near a hill, all of them shot dead, reported Geo News. “The bodies of these nine men were later found with bullet wounds in the nearby mountainous areas near a bridge,” one official said.
The murdered men belonged to the Mandi Bahauddin, Wazirabad and Gujranwala areas of Punjab. All of the deceased men were labourers, said Noshki Superintendent of Police (SP) Allah Bukhsh. In another incident, a car was fired upon on the same highway in which two passengers were killed and two others injured.
Terrorist attacks in Balochistan
Pakistan saw at least 245 terror attacks, primarily in the violence-prone Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan provinces, during the first quarter of 2024 that resulted in 432 deaths and 370 injuries among civilians, security personnel and rebels, according to a think tank report. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan accounted for 86 per cent of the attacks and 92 per cent of the deaths.
In the first quarter of 2024, the Balochistan province of Pakistan recorded a massive 96 per cent surge in violence, with fatalities rising from 91 in the last quarter of 2023 to 178 in 2024. Sindh saw a nearly 47 per cent rise in violence, though the number of fatalities was very low. The regions of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab and Gilgit-Baltistan recorded decreases in violence by 24 per cent, 85 per cent, and 65 per cent respectively.
(with PTI inputs)
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