Part of train track in D.G. Khan blown up: PTV broadcast suspended in Dera Bugti
Dawn Report
DERA GHAZI KHAN/QUETTA, Jan 6: Rail traffic on the Dera Ghazi Khan-Jacobabad section was suspended on Friday night after a ‘bomb’ explosion blew up the track hardly two kilometres south of the local railway station.
The site where the blast took place at 8pm is adjacent to the establishment-cum-residential colonies of the Atomic Energy Commission.
This was the second blast on the railway tracks in the DG Khan region during the current week. On Jan 4, unidentified saboteurs had also blown up a portion of the track near Basti Dervesh Lashari.
According to railway inquiry, Friday’s blast took place after the arrival of Khushal Express. It said traffic on the section had been suspended but was not sure how much time the repairs would take.
The recent sabotage activities in DG Khan occurred after an inter-provincial meeting of DCOs, held earlier this week, reportedly discussed measures to control infiltration of ‘anti-state’ elements from Balochistan into Punjab.
Last year eight bomb blasts were reported in the district.
According to a dispatch from Quetta, PTV transmission was suspended in Dera Bugti after an exchange of fire between security forces and Bugti tribesmen damaged the TV booster in the township.
“There has been no PTV transmission in Dera Bugti since this evening,” a senior official of the Dera Bugti administration said, adding that PTV engineers were busy trying to restore the broadcast.
Sources said the transmission might be restored in the next 24 hours.
According to reports, firing between security forces and the Bugti tribesmen stopped late in the evening after erupting at around 5.30pm.
They used heavy weapons and fired rockets at each other’s positions. No causality was reported, though.
However, sources in Dera Bugti said exchange of fire was continuing at night on the Sui-Dera Bugti road near Peshbogi area. “Both sides were firing rockets and mortar shells,” official sources confirmed but said no report of casualty had been received.
Meanwhile police foiled an attempt to destroy the Cadet College Mastung by defusing four rockets planted atop a hill near the college.
“The rockets were about to be fired as batteries and timers were attached to them,” a senior police officer in Mastung said.
Sources said some people of the area informed police about the presence of the rockets following which a team was dispatched to the site with a bomb disposal squad which found the devices, positioned in the direction of the cadet college.
The bomb disposal squad defused them all. They were Russian-made devices, the sources said.
Police also defused explosive devices planted under six huge towers of high-tension transmission line in the Chater area of Nasirabad district on Friday. According to sources, police found the devices around the towers during patrol.
“Miscreants had planted the explosive devices to blow up the six towers supplying electricity to Balochistan from the Guddu power plant,” the sources said, adding that security had been beefed up in the area after foiling the sabotage bid.
It may be mentioned that unknown miscreants had blown up the main pipeline supplying gas to the Uch Power Plant from Uch gas field two days ago, resulting in the closure of the 586-MW plant.
The Jamhoori Watan Party claimed that another woman was killed in shelling on Thursday night while district administration claimed that Nawab Akbar Bugti’s loyalists were heading back home from mountains.
JWP’s secretary-general Agha Shahid Hasan Bugti said the militia started shelling on Dera Bugti and its surrounding areas at 5.30pm. There was calm during the daytime, he added.
He claimed that a woman was killed in the suburb of the town as a result of militiamen’s firing on Thursday night.
Responding to a question, the JWP spokesman said tribesmen remained in the defensive mode and were not the first to open fire. “There is no point in tribesmen taking up arms against the state,” he added.
When the Frontier Corps violated the “code of honour” by reoccupying the vacated trenches, tribesmen also started going back into their bunkers, he claimed.
District Coordination Officer Dera Bugti Abdul Samad Lasi told Dawn that the situation in the town was normal as no incident of firing was reported from any part of the district.
He asserted that “we have received reports that tribesmen loyal to Nawab Akbar Bugti, who had gone up the mountains on the call of their chieftain, were now returning back home, vacating the trenches there.
When asked why they were coming back, the DCO claimed that shortage of food and ammunition had forced them to leave. Besides, “they have realized that they cannot fight with the government for long”.
