QUETTA, Dec 24: Activists of the Balochistan National Party (Mengal) blocked the Quetta-Karachi highway at different places to protest against the shifting of incarcerated party chief Sardar Akhtar Mengal to Karachi.

Security forces shifted Akhtar Mengal to Karachi from Hub early Sunday morning. He had been under house arrest since Nov 25 in Hub.

The protesters blocked the highway at Khuzdar, Wadh and Hub and the traffic was suspended between Khuzdar and Hub, claimed a BNP-M spokesman.

The spokesman claimed that a protest procession was taken out in Khuzdar and a strike was observed in Dalbandin and said police had arrested about 1,500 activists of the BNP-M in Quetta, Mastung, Kalat, Khuzdar, Kharan, Hub, and Gwadar from Nov 25 to Dec 22.

The spokesman said the government was shifting party members from one prison to another to put pressure on the BNP-M leadership to abandon its agitation against the government.

The spokesman said excesses and injustice could not force party members or the Baloch people to give up the struggle against the military operation, extra-judicial killings, arrests and looting of resources of Balochistan.