QUETTA: District and Sessions Judge Abdul Hakeem Kakar and his guard were gunned down on Thursday, while another judge was among two injured when they came under attack while heading to Mastung, officials said.

Judge Kakar and Additional Sessions Judge Tariq Lashari were on their way to Mastung from Quetta when unknown armed men attacked the vehicles they were in, Balochistan Home Department’s aide Babar Yousafzai told Dawn.

The armed men targeted Kakar and others at Wali Khan crossing, killing him and his guard on the spot, Yousafzai said.

He added that the two injured, including Lashari, were taken to a hospital in Mastung.

The incident comes a day after three people were killed and five others were injured in a gun attack on a Karachi-bound passenger bus and a bridge on the national highway was blown up in Mastung’s Khud Kocha area.

Subsequently, authorities imposed an indefinite curfew in the Khud Kocha sub-tehsil from 9pm on Wednesday.

Thursday’s attack also follows security forces killing three terrorists this week in Mastung, where the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) said two suicide bombers and their facilitator were also apprehended. Another seven terrorists were eliminated in Surab district.

Security concerns have heightened in Balochistan after a spate of major terrorist attacks took place earlier this month, which prompted counterterrorism operations across the province.

Among the counterterrorism efforts was Operation Shaban, in which 91 terrorists were killed between July 5 and July 16, according to security sources cited by state media. This took the tally of terrorists eliminated in operations across the province since July 5 to 129.