DERA MURAD JAMALI: Armed men killed seven members of a family in Sohbatpur district of Nasirabad division over a land dispute, police said on Thursday.

The tragic incident occurred in Mir Duran Khan Khosa village. The armed assailants opened indiscriminate fire with automatic weapons at the makeshift house of local farmer Ali Hassan Sheikh, killing him, his wife and their four sons and a daughter.

“They sustained multiple gunshot wounds, causing their immediate deaths,” a senior police officer told Dawn. He said that after the shooting, the attackers set the makeshift house on fire. “The bodies were burnt in the blaze,” he said, adding that after firing and burning the house, the armed men fled the scene.

Police arrived at the scene soon after receiving information about the tragedy, cordoned off the area and shifted the bodies to the district hospital in Sohbatpur in a tractor-trolley, as ambulances were not available in the area.

The bodies were later handed over to the family members after completing medico-legal formalities. They were later buried in Manji Pur.

Sohbatpur SSP Muhammad Yusuf Bhangar said that following the incident, police had set up roadblocks across the district and a search operation is underway to apprehend the culprits.

“The tragic killing stems from a dispute between two groups — the Sheikh clan and a faction of the Bugti tribe,” police said.

They added that an elder of the Khosa tribe had been attacked and injured in Quetta some time earlier.

Published in Dawn, March 28th, 2025