QUETTA, July 30: Four outlaws of a banned outfit were shot dead in an encounter with security forces during an operation in the Eastern Bypass area of the provincial capital on Tuesday morning.

A spokesman for the Frontier Corps said that teams consisting of FC, Anti-Terrorist Force and police personnel raided a house in the Eastern Bypass area following information about presence of members of a banned organisation involved in violence, target killing and bomb blasts.

A gun battle took place between the armed men and law enforcement personnel resulting in death of four outlaws and injuries to a member of a law enforcement agency.

“FC and police received intelligence information that armed miscreants belonging to a banned outfit were living in a house in Eastern Bypass area. Armed outlaws opened indiscriminate fire and used heavy weapons when security forces reached there and, in retaliation, four outlaws were killed on the spot and one law enforcement personnel suffered injuries,” the FC spokesman said.

The injured security man was rushed to the Combined Military Hospital.

The spokesman said the family members of the wanted men, including four children and a woman, had been taken into custody.

The FC spokesman added that a heavy cache of weapons and explosives were recovered from the house that included one Kalashnikov along with two magazines, two 9MM pistols, one 30-bore pistol, two IEDs, one suicide jacket, 10kg of explosives, one laptop, four wireless sets, 10 remote control bombs and four IED circuits. A spokesman for the banned Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, Abu Bakar Siddique, later called journalists and said the four men killed in the operation belonged to his group.

He said a suicide bomber killed a few days ago in Hazara Town was also a member of Lashkar-i-Jhangvi.