QUETTA, Jan 21: Paramilitary troops and armed tribesmen were engaged in heavy artillery duels in and around Dera Bugti for the second consecutive day on Saturday.

A spokesman for the Jamhoori Watan Party, Agha Shahid Bugti, said that seven persons were killed and 12 others injured in Saturday’s shelling. Four children were among those killed when paramilitary forces began an intense round of artillery fire on the centre of the town at 2:30pm, the spokesman said.

Apart from the children, he said, two men and a woman were also slain. The injured included five children and five women.

The JWP spokesman told Dawn that Frontier Corps personnel had arrested a former district health officer Dr Muhammad Hussain Bugti and his three servants in Dera Bugti on Saturday morning. After his arrest security personnel burned down Dr Bugti’s residence and clinic and threw out his belongings into the street, he said.

The district coordination officer in Dera Bugti, Abdul Samad Lasi, said that saboteurs targeted the FC fort and civil residential colony with heavy weapons. The firing damaged several buildings in addition to the Frontier Corps telephone exchange.

However, he said, the government forces had not suffered any casualty in the attacks. He clarified that the residential quarters were empty as government employees had already evacuated the place following an escalation in the hostilities.

Mr Lasi said that the artillery exchanges between security forces and armed tribesmen of Nawab Bugti continued for five hours.

Meanwhile, security forces and tribesmen continued to fire rockets on each other’s positions in Kohlu. Dozens of rockets were exchanged between the tribesmen and security forces in Fazalchal, Jabber, Naal, Taraman and Muhammad Khan areas of the district.

BOMB BLAST: A powerful explosion rocked Khuzdar on Saturday shattering the windowpanes of nearby houses, police officials said. However, there were no reports of casualties.