QUETTA, March 18: Leaders and activists of the four-party Baloch Alliance took out a procession and staged a demonstration in front of the Balochistan Assembly. The protesters, who wore black armbands and held black flags, raised slogans in favour of the people killed during fierce gunbattles with security forces in Dera Bugti, and vowed to avenge their death. The protesters, who gathered in front of the Quetta Press Club and marched towards the assembly building where the legislature was in session. The protesters shouted slogans against President Gen Pervez Musharraf, Balochistan governor and the Punjab chief minister. Sardar Akhtar Mengal, chief of the BNP-M, Mir Hamayun Marri, Provincial President of the JWP, Mir Tahir Bizenjo, Secretary-general of the National Party, Amanullah Baloch, chairman of the BSO, and Mir Wahdood Raisani of the Raisani Qaumi ittehad addressed the protesters. Sardar Mengal alleged that security forces fired 700 mortar shells on the residence of Nawab Akbar Bugti and other houses of tribesmen, leaving 50 people dead and 150 injured.

He criticized the provincial government and accused it of serving interests of the military dictatorship at the cost the Baloch people just to stay in power.

He described the incident a naked state terrorism and worst form of aggression against innocent people of Dera Bugti.

Mr Mengal said that Thursday’s brutality of state security forces with Bugti tribesmen was not the first example of oppression against the Baloch people as during the last five decades the history was replete with such excesses committed by the ruling junta on the Baloch people.

He said the military generals wanted to punish Nawab Akbar Bugti for exposing the army official’s role in the Sui case, and pledged that such tactics against sons of the soil could not crush the will of the Baloch people.

He condemned security forces for not allowing the injured to be shifted to hospital in other areas.

He declared that the Baloch people would take revenge from those who had killed innocent women and children in Dera Bugti.