KARACHI, June 15: The Jamhoori Watan Party has claimed that 17 persons were picked up in midnight raids carried out by the law-enforcement agencies in Gulshan-i-Hadeed and the Balochistan town of Hub in connection with Thursday’s killing of armymen in Quetta.

A spokesman for the JWP, in a statement issued here on Friday, claimed that police teams, accompanied by personnel of other security agencies, carried out a raid in Murad Goth, Hub, and picked up eight persons who, he alleged, were blindfolded before being taken away to some unknown place.

The JWP statement identified them as Gul Hasan, Gulsher, Mohammad Azam Jan, Palay Khan, Eid Mohammad alias Khero, Shah Mohammad, Deen Mohammad and Manzoor Husain.

The spokesman further claimed that in a similar raid on several houses in Gulshan-i-Hadeed, the security agencies picked up nine people who included Amir Bakhsh Jamil, Ismail, Amir Bakhsh, Qadir Bakhsh, Salim Bakhsh and Zahid Husain.

He expressed concern over the wellbeing of the victims and called for producing them before a court of law as soon as possible.