Gunmen kill 4 truck drivers in Pakistan’s Balochistan province

Four truck drivers were abducted and later shot dead by unidentified gunmen in Pakistan’s restive Balochistan province, officials said on Wednesday.

The four truck drivers were abducted from the Quetta-Taftan highway last week.

Their bullet-riddled bodies were found on Tuesday night in the Galangoor area of Noshki, approximately 100 km west of Quetta, Balochistan government spokesperson Shahid Rind said.

He said the drivers were abducted while transporting LPG imported from Iran when masked armed men intercepted their trucks in the Ahmedwal area on the Quetta-Taftan highway and took them away.

A police official said locals informed them about the bodies, which were later identified as those of the abducted truck drivers from Rahimyar Khan and Pakpattan in the Punjab province.

According to hospital officials, all four men died from multiple bullet injuries after being shot from a close range.

Though no one has claimed responsibility for the killings as yet, this isn’t the first time that separatist groups have targeted workers from other provinces.

In February, gunmen stopped a passenger bus on the Barkhan highway, and after checking their national identity cards, they offloaded eight passengers from Punjab and shot them dead.

In March, four labourers were gunned down in Kalat district in the province.

Last year in October, 20 workers at a coal mine in the Duki area of Balochistan were rounded up and gunned down by some 40 attackers.

Four of the victims were from Afghanistan, while the rest were labourers from Pushtun-dominated areas of the province.

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