Gunmen abduct and kill 9 passengers from Punjab after attack on bus near Balochistan’s Noshki

Bureau Report
QUETTA: Nine people from Punjab were killed in the early hours of Saturday when gunmen forced them off a bus on the Quetta-Taftan Highway N-40 in the vicinity of Sultan Charhai near Noshki, Balochistan. After abducting the passengers from the Taftan-bound bus, the gunmen shot them dead. Local and provincial authorities have confirmed that the bodies were found under a nearby bridge about an hour and a half later.
The gunmen, numbering around 10-12, stopped the bus and checked the identity cards of the passengers before taking nine of them. The victims were all men from Wazirabad, Mandi Bahauddin, and Gujranwala. A separate attack on a different vehicle trying to pass through the gunmen’s cordon resulted in two more fatalities. One passenger was killed, and four were injured when the gunmen shot at the car. The victims’ bodies were shifted to Quetta, as reported by Noshki Civil Hospital Medical Superintendent Zafar Mengal. A brother of provincial assembly member Ghulam Dastgir Badini was among the deceased in the car attack. No group has claimed responsibility for either incident. President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif condemned the attacks. Sharif expressed condolences to the victims’ families and promised that the perpetrators and their facilitators would be punished. Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi stated that such acts would not be tolerated, and Balochistan Chief Minister Mir Sarfraz Bugti vowed to deal with the terrorists harshly. This is not the first incident of its kind in the region. In October 2023, six laborers from Punjab were killed in Turbat in Balochistan’s Kech district. They were targeted while working for a local contractor. Similar attacks have taken place in the past, including in 2015 when 20 construction workers were killed near Turbat.
Authorities have vowed to investigate the attacks and take decisive action against those responsible.