November 22, 2008	Saturday	Ziqa'ad 23, 1429

QUETTA, Nov 21: A police constable and a man were gunned down in Dashat area, some 20 kilometres from here on the Quetta-Sibi road, on Friday.

Police said unidentified people ridding on a motorcycle opened fire on Constable Ghulam Hazrat and Allama Hasan Zakri when their van pulled up at a petrol pump. They died on the spot.

Police rushed to the site and shifted the bodies to the Civil Hospital, Quetta.

According to sources, Allama Zakri was a Pesh Imam (prayer leader) at the Punjabi Imambargah in Quetta.

In another incident, gunmen men killed a government contractor in Khuzdar.

Meanwhile, a man injured in a hand-grenade attack in the coal mine town of Mach late on Thursday night died in a hospital on Friday.

Police said unidentified people had hurled the grenade on the house of a retired railway officer, Nazir Ahmed. Nazir’s son, Shahzad, was seriously injured in the attack and was admitted to a hospital in Mach.

The blast also damaged a portion of the house.

A spokesman for the defunct Baloch Liberation Army, Beebargh Baloch, has claimed responsibility for the grenade attack.

Talking from an unspecified place on phone, Beebargh told newsmen that the BLA also carried out a cycle bomb explosion in the Chaki Shahwani area of Sariab. He said the people killed in BLA’s attacks were working against the struggle of the Baloch people.