QUETTA: A local journalist and two other people were shot dead in Bolan district late on Thursday night.

Levies sources said a group of armed men intercepted a bus coming from Quetta on its way to Punjab on Quetta-Sukkur highway in the Machh area of Bolan district and kidnapped six passengers.

The sources said that three of them were later gunned down when they tried to escape.

“The armed men took the three other passengers with them,” Levies Tehsildar for Mach Mir Zubair Kurd said.

A truck driver passing through the area got injured when the armed men opened fire on the three passengers, he added.

The Levies force took the bodies and the injured driver to civil hospital in Machh.

The Levies sources said that one of the deceased was identified as Jamshed Kharal, who had been working for a newspaper in Quetta, and others as Mohammad Kashif and Mohammad Siddique.

The names of the three passengers who were taken away could not be ascertained. The bus was going to Sadiqabad.