QUETTA: Eight members of a family, six of them women and children, were gunned down in an attack on the house of a peace force commander in tehsil Sui of Dera Bugti district on Sunday. Six of the attackers were killed in subsequent clashes with volunteers of the peace force and security forces.

According to officials, gunmen attacked the house of Ghazi Khan Marhata Bugti in Dodatba village in the early morning and started firing with automatic weapons, killing the eight people on the spot.

“Ghazi Khan Marhata, commander of the Bugti peace force, his brother Imam Bakhsh, three women and three children were shot dead. They killed the entire family,” Balochistan Home Secretary Asad Gilani told Dawn.

Two attackers were killed in an exchange of fire with the volunteers. He said four other attackers were later killed in a gunbattle with Frontier Corps personnel in Maswani village.

Police said the area where the incident had taken place was close to Subatpur district on the Sindh-Balochistan border. “The armed men entered the house and opened fire with automatic weapons. The victims were sleeping at the time,” police said.

A spokesman for the Frontier Corps accused the banned Baloch Republican Army (BRA) of having carried out the attack. He said that soon after the attack, FC’s quick response force cordoned off the area, but its personnel also came under the attack.

The FC troops returned fire and six men of the BRA were killed in the furious gunbattle which continued for several hours, the spokesman said, adding that a large quantity of arms and ammunition were seized from the area.

He said the BRA men had carried out the attack because Ghazi Khan Marhata was cooperating with security forces.

“The people of the area identified three BRA men killed in the clash. They were involved in killing, kidnapping for ransom, attacking security forces and bombing gas pipelines,” he alleged.

But the BRA rejected the FC’s claim. Calling from an unidentified place, its spokesman Sarbaz Baloch denied that his organisation had carried out the attack on the house and killed Ghazi Khan Marhata and members of his family.

However, he confirmed the killing of two BRA men in a clash with security forces in Pather Nallah area of Dera Bugti and said seven security personnel were also killed in the attack. He identified the two BRA men as Madad Bugti and Shero Bugti.