Team News Riveting
Islamabad, August 26
At least 23 people were killed in Balochistan’s Musakhail district after armed men offloaded passengers from trucks and buses early Monday morning and shot at them after checking their identities.
Pakistan’s leading newspaper The Dawn quoted Musakhail Assistant Commissioner Najeeb Kakar and said armed men blocked the inter-provincial highway in the Rarasham area of the district and offloaded passengers from several buses. “The dead are reportedly from Punjab,” he said, adding that the armed men also set fire to 10 vehicles.
Police and Levies officials reached the spot and began shifting the bodies to the hospital, he added. Of the victims, three are from Balochistan and the rest from Punjab.
“Vehicles travelling to and from Punjab were inspected, and individuals from Punjab were identified and shot,” Kakar added. No information regarding who carried out the attack has been shared yet, he added.
This is the second devastating attack this year. In April, nine passengers were offloaded from a bus near Balochistan’s Noshki city and shot dead after gunmen checked their ID cards.
Similar attacks have taken place over the past few years. In October last year, unidentified gunmen fatally shot six labourers hailing from Punjab in Turbat in Balochistan’s Kech district. According to the police, the killings were targeted. All victims belonged to different areas of southern Punjab, suggesting they had been chosen for their ethnic background.
In 2019, gunmen stopped a bus near Ormara near Gwadar district, and shot dead 14 people, including personnel of the Navy, Air Force and Coast Guards, after checking their CNICs.
A similar incident occurred in 2015 when gunmen killed 20 construction workers and injured three others in a pre-dawn attack on a labourers’ camp near Turbat. The victims belonged to Sindh and Punjab.
