QUETTA, Jan 4: Three people were killed and four others suffered injuries during a skirmish between security forces and tribesmen around the Sui area on Wednesday.

According to DCO Dera Bugti, a group of miscreants led by Bakhshoo Mandrani was coming towards Sui to attack the gas installations there. When they came face to face with militiamen in the Hashqani area, an exchange of fire took place in which three attackers were killed and four others suffered injuries.

The rest of the attackers escaped, he said.

Separately, unidentified terrorists blew up the railway track near Basti Darvesh Lashari, 20km from Dera Ghazi Khan, at around 11.45pm on Wednesday. No loss of life has yet been reported, a dispatch from our correspondent in D.G. Khan said.

Due to the damage to the track, Chiltan Express had been stopped at the Dera Ghazi Khan station.

Jamhoori Watan Party’s spokesman Agha Shahid claimed that one tribesman Gulo Bugto was killed when a bullet fired by security forces hit him in the centre of Dera Bugti town.

Elsewhere, fighting between security forces and tribesmen continued for the fourth straight day, with JWP claiming that helicopter shelling left three women and 11 children wounded.

An official said four security personnel suffered injuries in a landmine blast.

JWP spokesman Agha Shahid Hasan Bugti alleged that for the first time since fighting erupted four days ago security forces used seven helicopters to pound their targets. In one incident of shelling in the Siahkoh area near Dera Bugti, three women and 11 children were seriously injured.

He claimed that helicopter shelling continued in the area for two hours during which, in a separate incident, two women and four children suffered injuries as splinters of a heavy weapon hit the private vehicle they were travelling in.

He said troops fired rockets in the suburbs of Dera Bugti in the morning and intensified firing after 6pm. Because of darkness, it was hard to know about any casualties, he added.

The forces encircled the Lanjah area near the Loto gas field but due to resistance put up by tribesmen, they retreated, the JWP spokesman claimed.

He said the deputy high commissioner of Britain in Pakistan, who is on a visit to the provincial capital, met him on Wednesday during which he briefed the diplomat on the situation in Dera Bugti.

District Coordination Officer Dera Bugti Abdul Samad Lasi said that in a landmine explosion, four security forces personnel, including an officer, were injured. They have been shifted to the Sui hospital for treatment.

He said a team was going to the Loto gas field to repair the water plant that was damaged the other day in a rocket attack but had to break the journey because of the mine blast.

Mr Lasi told this correspondent that Nawab Akbar Bugti’s men fired rockets at the Frontier Corps checkpoint near the Sui gas installations. This activity continued for an hour and stopped after security forces returned fire and the miscreants beat a retreat.

“The situation has become serious after today’s landmine incident as miscreants may have laid mines in other areas also,” he said, adding that if repair work was not started in the next 48 hours, then the supply of gas from Loti field would stop.

He said several saboteurs had been nabbed and investigation was in progress.

The FC sources said that in the rocket attack in the Kahan area of Kohlu district a driver of the security forces suffered injury.

Meanwhile, repair work on the gas pipeline for Uch power plant that had been damaged in a rocket attack on Tuesday night, would be completed by Wednesday night, an OGDC official said.

He told this correspondent that the 80-foot pipeline between Chatter and Dera Murad Jamali was damaged in a subversive act. A team of experts has been working since morning to restore gas to the 536-MW power plant.