Eight killed in firing at Quetta shop, Turbat bus

QUETTA: In a fresh wave of grisly target killings in Balochistan, eight people were shot dead on Monday evening in Quetta and Turbat.In Quetta, unknown armed miscreants opened fire on people at a cobbler’s shop on the Prince Road.

According to police, armed men on motorcycles reached the cobbler’s shop at approximately 7:25pm. Eight people who belonged to the Hazara community were sitting at the shop when the assailants sprayed the group with bullets, killing two persons instantaneously. The attack was so sudden and intense that all the eight people sustained multiple bullet injuries, and in addition to the two who died on the spot, another two breathed their last on their way to hospital. The bodies of two others were recovered from the shop a few hours after the bloody incident.

Upon being informed, the police and Frontier Corps (FC) reached the spot and shifted the injured to the Civil Hospital. Later, the victims were shifted to the CMH for treatment. Following the attack, emergency was declared in all the major hospitals, hospital sources confirmed.

Large congregations of Hazara community members converged at the Civil Hospital. The gathering included political activists as well as students who promptly blocked the cityís main Jinnah Road in protest. They chanted slogans and demanded that the incumbent government immediately step down, terming the incident another failure of the establishment to uphold law and order in the province.

The Hazara Democratic Party (HDP), Pashtoonkhawa Milli-Awami Party (PkMAP) and others have all strongly condemned the Quetta killings, and demanded that the provincial government step down as it had failed to protect the life and property of citizens.

Agencies add from Turbat: Unknown armed men on Monday shot dead two people in the Mand Balo area of Balochistan, sources said.According to a police official, a Karachi-bound coach coming from Iran was parked near a local bus stop when armed assailants riding a motorbike opened fire on its passengers before fleeing from the scene. The victims of the ambush sustained several bullet injuries and breathed their last while being shifted to a nearby hospital. The deceased were later identified as Faisal Javed and Asif Javed, residents of Sargodha and Lahore respectively, and their bodies were dispatched to their native towns following the completion of medico-legal formalities. The police have registered a case against the unknown miscreants.

Elsewhere in the province, the Levies Forces recovered two more bullet-ridden bodies from the Surab area of Kalat district on Monday. According to a Levies official, the officers upon reaching the site discovered the two mutilated bodies which had been dumped in the desert. The bodies were promptly sent to the district headquarters hospital for identification.