15 January 2005	Saturday	04 Zilhaj 1425

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QUETTA, Jan 14: The law-enforcement agencies on Friday launched a house-to-house search operation in Sui and other adjacent areas to seize weapons and arrest elements involved in recent attacks on the Sui gas plant , reports reaching here from the area say.

The Frontier Corps paramilitary troops have established checkpoints at various places and are patrolling the area. "Only members of the Frontier Corps have been patrolling the area and so far there is no army movement," Dr Akbar, a senior official of the local administration, told Dawn by telephone from the area.

"In order to beef up the security in the area, 500 more paramilitary troops reached Sui on Friday afternoon," official sources told told Dawn condition of anomymity. The sources further said that Inspector-General of the Frontier Corps Major-General Shujaat Zameer Dar also visited the Sui ara on Friday.

The people and government employees have started coming back to the area. They had to endure heavy frisking at all checkpoints by members of law-enforcement agencies.

"We were stopped at the Farooq checkpoint for heavy frisking and then allowed entry to Sui," a government employee complained. The situation is slowly returning to normalcy in the troubled township as some shops opened on Friday but most of the public transport is still off the road.

As the public transport and goods carriers and heavy trucks are not plying on the road because of fear of violence, the people of the area are experiencing shortage of daily use foods items and other goods.

Electricity and water supply is still suspended in many areas of the town. However, with the return of Wapda employees the repair work on damaged electricity poles and broken wires has begun. Water and electricity supply would be fully restored in a couple of days, the sources said.

Meanwhile, the Pakistan Petroleum has said the Sui gas plant has suffered a greater damage than what was assessed earlier. In a Press statement issued here on Friday, the company said that after a detailed assessment of the damage, it had been found that the extent of the damage was greater than assessed earlier after the shutdown of the plant.

"There is also need to replace some critical instruments, which have been found damaged. It may, therefore, take some time before the repair work is completed and gas supply from Sui is recommenced."

The statement further said that the company was making utmost efforts to complete the repair work immediately and restore normal gas supply at the earliest.

AFP ADDS: Hundreds of paramilitary troops involved in the operation focussed on villages in the vicinity of the Sui gas fields, to flush out weapons and secure the facility, local official Abdul Samad told AFP.

"So far there has been no arrests but the search operation is progressing well," Mr Samad said. "The immediate restoration of gas supply across the country is not possible," the managing-director of the Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited, Abdul Rashid Lone, told PTV.

A technical team is trying to reach Sui to repair the damaged pipeline, he added. The company is one of two which distributes gas from the plant. There would also be temporary cuts for domestic consumers if supplies from Sui were not restored within two days, said the other distributor, Sui Southern Gas Pipelines Limited.

The tribesmen have for been fighting for years to to win more royalties and better jobs from the gas field but said the latest attacks were purely in revenge for the rape of a woman doctor working in the plant's hospital.