GWADAR: The bodies of three migrant labourers who were abducted the previous night from near Balochistan's port city of Gwadar were found dumped in the nearby hills on Thursday, officials said.

The victims had been picked up by unknown gunmen the previous night from a stone-crushing plant at Sansar, around 70 kilometres north of the Gwadar port.

Levies officers told DawnNews that all three bodies bore bullet wounds. The whereabouts of a fourth kidnapped man, the owner of the plant, were still unknown.

“Gunmen came during the night and attacked. They set fire to machinery at the plant, kidnapped the owner and three labourers,” local official Dostain Baloch told news agency AFP.

“They took away all of them and later on, during the night, they killed the three labourers and discarded their bodies. The owner is still with them,” he added.

Another local official, Mohammed Akbar, and Mohammed Omar, the partner of the kidnapped owner, confirmed the attack.

The bodies of the victims were later sent back to their families in their respective areas.

Pakistan's southwestern Balochistan province is believed to have substantial oil and gas reserves, but is beset by a Baloch nationalist insurgency.

Earlier this year, Pakistan approved the transfer of Gwadar from Singapore’s PSA International to the state-owned China Overseas Port Holdings Limited.

Pakistan pitched the deal as an energy and trade corridor that would connect China to the Arabian Sea and Strait of Hormuz, a gateway for a third of the world’s traded oil, overland through an expanded Karakoram Highway.