GWADAR: Another five bullet-riddled bodies were found in the Tajban area of Turbat tehsil in Kech district on Saturday just two days after 15 bodies were found in the Grock mountainous area in the same district’s Buleda tehsil.

Official sources said that the five bodies were found in a seasonal stream, some 60km northwest of Turbat town.

According to Commissioner of Makran division Bashir Ahmed Bangulzai, documents and identity cards found with the bodies have confirmed that the victims hailed from different villages of Punjab’s Gujrat district. They were illegally trying to enter Iran for their onward journey to Europe.

Victims may have been kidnapped with 15 others whose bodies were found on Nov 15

Assistant Commissioner of Turbat Dr Jamil Ahmed Baloch told Dawn that soon after people of the area informed the local administration about the bodies at around 2.30pm personnel of Levies force and Frontier Corps rushed to the area and shifted bodies to the district hospital in Turbat.

Quoting sources in the hospital, Mr Baloch said all the victims had been shot at point-blank range. The killers later dumped the bodies in the stream, he added.

The assistant commissioner said that the victims were brought from their villages in Punjab to Kech district for their further journey to Iran by crossing the border illegally.

He said the five victims might have been kidnapped on Nov 15 with the other 15 people whose bodies were found the same day. The kidnappers might have kept these five people in captivity and killed them on Saturday.

The victims were identified as Daanish Awan, 23, Qasim Awan, 19, Saqib, 18, and Usman Qadeer Awan, 24, of Khori Rasulpur in a precinct of Karianwala police, and Badar Muneer, 25, of Kassoki in a Saddar Jalalpur Jattan police precinct.

The bodies have been shifted to Karachi and arrangements are being made to send them to the victims’ villages.

No one has so far claimed responsibility for the killing of these five people. The responsibility for Wednesday’s killing of 15 people was claimed by the banned Baloch Liberation Front.

Published in Dawn, November 19th, 2017