Five Hazaras gunned down in Quetta attack on vehicle

QUETTA: Unidentified assailants opened fire at a vehicle coming from Chaman in Quetta’s Kuchlak area on Sunday evening, leaving five people dead.

The vehicle carried members of the Hazara community. However, it was still unclear if they were local Hazaras or hailed from Afghanistan.

The firing took place when the travellers stopped at a filling station to refuel their vehicle. Five people, including two women, died in the attack.

“The incident seems to be an act of targeted killing,” Zahoor Khan, a police official, said.

After the incident, the suspects sped away on their motorcycles, Khan said.

Moments later, police officials and law enforcement agencies’ personnel arrived at the site of the incident. The bodies were shifted to hospital for postmortem. A case has been registered against unidentified attackers and investigations were underway.

Three of the dead were identified as Mehdi, Yazdan and Ghulam Hussain.

Balochistan Chief Minister Sanaullah Zehri strongly condemned the terrorist attack which resulted in the loss of precious lives. He directed that all resources should be mobilized for the arrest of terrorists involved in the incident. He said that terrorists were shedding the blood of innocent people to secure their ulterior motives. He expressed heartfelt sympathy with relatives of those killed in the firing incident.

Separately, a National Party office in Washbood area of Panjgur was attacked on Sunday. Armed men riding a motorcycle fired bullets and lobbed a hand grenade as they attacked the National Party unit office. However, no report of any loss of life or damage was received.

Meanwhile, samples from two bodies found in a mountainous area of Mastung district on Thursday night have been sent to Islamabad for a DNA test to ascertain identity of the deceased.

Official sources said that the bodies of the deceased, who seemed to have died two month ago, might be of the two Chinese nationals – a man and a woman – who were kidnapped in Quetta’s Jinnah Town on May 24. They said the bodies were in bad condition and beyond recognition. Levies personnel shifted the bodies to the civil hospital in Mastung, from where they were sent to the Combined Military Hospital in Quetta.

A security official said that the bodies found in Mastung were in very bad condition, adding that ‘they were just skeletons’. He said shoes worn by the two were also found on the bodies. He said the DNA test was the only way to ascertain the identity of the victims.

According to sources, Chinese officials have been approached to get samples from relatives of the kidnapped man and woman for the DNA test.