QUETTA: Five construction workers were killed and three others suffered injuries in an attack near Ganz, some 15km west of Jewani, in Gwadar district on Wednesday.

According to official sources, the labourers were working at an under-construction house of a private housing scheme on Peshkan-Ganz road, which links Gwadar with Jewani, when a group of gunmen riding motorcycles appeared on the scene and opened fire on the workers.

The tragic incident took place when the concluding session of three-day Asian Parliamentary Assembly Committee on Political Affairs was under way in Gwadar and Balochistan Chief Minister Jam Kamal Alyani was present in neighbouring Ormara.

“Five labourers were killed on the spot and three others sustained injuries when armed men opened indiscriminate fire with automatic weapons,” Muhammad Asghar, a member of the Jewani District Counsel, said. Personnel of security forces shifted the bodies and the injured to the Gwadar Development Authority Hospital.

“We have received five bodies and three injured,” the hospital officials confirmed, adding that the workers had received multiple bullet injuries on their torsos which caused their on-the-spot death. The injured have received serous multiple bullet wounds.

Sources said that the owners of the private housing scheme company had not arranged security for the labourers who were working at the housing scheme site. “There was no security at the construction site when the gunmen men launched the attack.”

Security officials identified four of the deceased as Naeem Ahmed and Hunzullah, resident of Karachi, Irshad Ali of Sukkur and Muhammad Shakir of Multan. The fifth deceased could not be identified so far.

Two of the three injured were identified as Shamsullah and Muhammad Rahim.

Security forces launched a search operation in the area to trace out the militants involved in the attack.

This was the fourth incident of its kind in the Makran area. Over three dozen labourers have been killed in the earlier attacks which took place in different areas of Turbat and Gwadar districts.

The bodies of the victims of Wednesday’s attack will be sent to the areas of the deceased after medico-legal and other formalities are completed.

No militant organisation has claimed responsibility for the fresh killings so far, but in the past the banned Baloch Liberation Front had owned such incidents.

Balochistan Governor retired Justice Amanullah Yasinzai and Chief Minister Jam Kamal Khan have strongly condemned the firing incident and the killing of labourers saying that every kind of terrorism was condemnable and the government would not allow anybody to speared fear in the society through terrorism.

Published in Dawn, November 1st, 2018