QUETTA, April 7: Five army personnel, including two senior officers, were injured in an armed attack on army vehicles on the RCD Highway in the Wadh area, some 400kms south-east from here, on Friday evening.
However, sources claimed that three army soldiers had been killed in the attack and the assailants had set an army vehicle ablaze after firing. But provincial authorities did not confirm killings in the incident and said five army personnel had been injured in the attack.
Sources said the wife and two children of an army officer were also travelling in one of the vehicles who remained unhurt and reached Khuzdar safely.
They said an army convoy of two vehicles was on its way to Quetta from Karcahi when a group of people who had blocked the highway near Wadh signalled them to stop. The army vehicles did not stop and continued their journey. Later, some armed men riding on motorcycles opened fire on the vehicles near the Ibrahimzai village, some four kilometres away from Wadh.
Official sources said the injured included a brigadier and a major who were taken to the CMH, Khuzdar.
One of the vehicles overturned when the driver received bullet injury, which was later set on fire by the attackers, a police official of the Wadh police station told Dawn by telephone.
He said the armed men and the army personnel had exchanged fire for over half an hour.
Sources said that after the incident, heavy contingents of security forces were despatched to the area where a search operation had already been launched for the arrest of the attackers.
Meanwhile, three personnel of security forces were injured in a landmine explosion in the Pir Koh gas field area.
The security men were defusing the landmine found in the area when it exploded.
Reports said some armed men also destroyed a gas pipeline of well number 10 of the Loti gas field.
