Daily Times

CHAMAN: At least seven people were killed as Afghan border forces opened fire on security personnel guarding a census team in Balochistan’s Chaman area early Friday, police said.

Killa Abdullah’s District Police Officer (DPO) Sajid Mohmand said 22 people were also injured due to firing from the Afghan side. All the dead and injured belong to the Killi Luqman and Killi Jahangir areas of Chaman.

“Five seriously wounded people were sent to Quetta for medical treatment,” the medical superintendent of the Chaman Civil Hospital, Dr Akhtar, said.

Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) had earlier released a statement saying Afghan Border Police opened fire on Frontier Corps (FC) personnel detailed for the security of a census team in Chaman, leaving one person dead and 18 injured. The death toll has subsequently risen to seven. Four FC Balochistan men are among those injured.

“Since 30th April, Afghan Border Police had been creating hurdles in [the] conduct of census in divided villages of Killi Luqman and Killi Jahangir in Chaman area, on Pakistani side of the border,” the military’s media wing said.

ISPR said the firing by Afghan border guards comes despite the fact that Afghan authorities had been informed in advance about the census exercise in Pakistan and coordination was carried out through diplomatic and military channels.

But Samim Khpalwak, spokesman for the governor of Afghanistan’s Kandahar province, said Pakistani officials had strayed on to the Afghan side of the border and were attempting to count people living there. “So far in the fighting, we have one Afghan civilian killed and three border police forces wounded,” he told AFP, adding that the scuffle was still going on, with ‘dozens’ of Afghan security forces rushing to the scene.

The Chaman border crossing has been sealed as Pakistani and Afghan troops continue to exchange fire, the ISPR press release said.

Meanwhile, security forces have asked the residents of villages affected by the firing to evacuate.

“We were sleeping when we suddenly heard firing and blasts,” Haji Ayub, a resident of Killi Jahangir said. “We immediately left our houses and came to Chaman bazaar.”

Abdul Mateen, a resident of Killi Luqman said FC personnel were guarding the census staff in his village when the Afghan forces opened fire on them. “I lost a close relative in the attack,” he said.

Friday’s firing prompted Pakistani authorities to shut down the Chaman gate – which leads from Balochistan province into Kandahar and is one of only two major crossing points – and summon the Afghan Charge d’Affairs in Islamabad in protest.

In a statement Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said it was Afghanistan’s responsibility to ‘ensure that such incidents are permanently stopped’.