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Wednesday, August 07, 2013


BLA guns down 14 abducted passengers

* Three security personnel also killed as around 200 gunmen kidnap passengers on five Punjab-bound buses in Machh, check their CNICs and kill 14 of them

QUETTA: At least 14 people, including three security personnel, were killed on Tuesday in an attack by Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) militants on five passenger buses in Machh area of Bolan, some 80 kilometres from the provincial capital.
The buses were on their way from Quetta to Punjab when the armed men intercepted them in Machh and kidnapped the passengers.
The militants killed 13 passengers after inspecting their national identity cards (NICs). The bodies were later recovered from the mountainous area of Bolan.
The passengers were going to their hometown to celebrate the festive occasion of Eidul Fitar. Bolan Deputy Commissioner Abdul Waheed Shah told the media that the attackers, numbered between 150 and 200, first kidnapped the passengers and then killed them. Waheed said that militants had earlier opened fire on an oil tanker of the Pakistan Air Force elsewhere on the same road, leaving the tanker destroyed.
The militants also had a shootout with Frontier Corps (FC) personnel in which an FC man was killed. The attackers also kidnapped seven Balochistan Levies personnel from the area, the deputy commissioner said.
Following this incident, he added, the militants, dressed in uniform of FC and Balochistan Levies, blocked the road at another location and installed a fake checkpost.
“Militants intercepted the passenger buses, which were on their way from Quetta to Punjab, on the main highway. After inspecting their NICs, militants kidnapped 13 people and went to the mountains,” Waheed said.
“They killed all the kidnapped passengers who included to security personnel – one from the Pakistan Army and the other from FC Kalat Scouts.”
He said that the area had been cordoned off and a search operation was launched, adding that security forces were also going to launch an aerial operation to hit militants’ camps in mountainous areas of the Bolan.
However, Balochistan Home Secretary Akbar Hussain Durrani told AFP, “Miscreants blocked the road in two places. First they took away five FC men from an FC patrol vehicle, tied them up and snatched their walkie-talkies and weapons.”
The militants then stopped the buses and took away 13 labourers. Security force personnel chased after them, but the militants fired a rocket that killed one security officer, Durrani said. “Then they lined them up in the mountains and killed 13,” added Durrani.
Local official Kashif Nabi confirmed the incident and said the bodies had been recovered.
“We are making arrangements to bring them to Quetta,” he said. A spokesman for the banned organisation Baloch Liberation Army, Meerek Baloch, claimed responsibility of the attack. He said the 13 men were members of intelligence agencies and other security forces. The rest of the men had been set free, he said.
“These 13 people were either employees of the army or of other security institutions.”
But police said only two of the men belonged to the security services. The rest were civilians who were apparently targeted because they came from Punjab province, the police said.
Balochistan Governor Muhammad Khan Achakzai and Chief Minister Dr Abdul Malik Baloch condemned the incident and ordered the arrest of militants at the earliest.
The separatist Baloch movement is only one of many conflicts plaguing the arid, resource-rich province Balochistan. The separatists accuse other, more powerful Pakistani provinces, in particular Punjab, of plundering Balochistan’s natural gas and minerals while residents live in poverty. Ethnic Baloch separatists have repeatedly attacked civilians who come to their province from other parts of Pakistan. Balochistan is also a flashpoint for surging sectarian violence between Sunni and Shias, who account for around a fifth of the country’s 180 million people. staff report/agencies

Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk


 

 

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