QUETTA: Five people, including a district and sessions judge, his security guard and three passengers travelling on a Karachi-bound bus, were killed in separate attacks in Balochistan’s Mastung district over two consecutive days, officials said.
On Thursday morning, unidentified gunmen ambushed a vehicle carrying judicial officers near the Wali Khan railway crossing in Mastung’s Sangar area along the Quetta-Karachi Highway.
Mastung Superintendent of Police (SP) Allah Bakhsh said District and Sessions Judge Abdul Hakim Kakar and his official security guard, Muhammad Zaman, were killed on the spot, while Additional Sessions Judge Tariq Lashari sustained injuries in the attack.
The judges were travelling from Quetta to Mastung, around 50 kilometres from the provincial capital, when armed assailants opened fire on their vehicle.
The bodies of the deceased and the injured judge were shifted to a nearby hospital. Police launched an investigation, while no group had claimed responsibility for the attack at the time of filing this report.
Following the incident, the Balochistan Bar Council announced a two-day strike and three days of mourning, condemning the killing of the judicial officer and demanding immediate action against those responsible.
A day earlier, three passengers were killed and five others injured after unidentified gunmen opened fire on a Karachi-bound private passenger bus in the Garo area of Khud Kocha tehsil in Mastung district.
Deputy Commissioner Mastung Bahram Saleem said the bus was travelling from Quetta to Karachi when attackers, reportedly positioned on nearby hills, opened fire before fleeing the scene.
The deceased were identified as Inamul Haq of Killa Abdullah, Syed Tariq Niaz Rizvi of Karachi and Liaqat Khan of Gulistan. The injured included Abdul Wali of Pishin and Najam and Abdul Hanan, both residents of Quetta.
In a separate act of sabotage on the same day, an explosion destroyed a bridge on the National Highway, disrupting traffic between Quetta and Karachi for several hours before authorities restored the route.
Following the bus attack, authorities imposed a curfew in the Khud Kocha area as security forces launched a search operation to track down the attackers.
The latest violence came as the military’s media wing announced that security forces had killed 10 militants and arrested two alleged female suicide bombers, along with their facilitator, during intelligence-based operations carried out in Mastung and Surab districts over the previous 48 hours.
The back-to-back attacks have raised fresh concerns over the security situation in Mastung, a district that has witnessed repeated militant attacks targeting civilians, law enforcement personnel and government officials in recent months.
