One person was killed and three teenagers injured when unknown assailants opened fire in a Christian colony of Mastung town, some 50 kilometres southwest of Quetta.
As per the details, armed motorcyclists on Monday evening entered the colony located near Babu Mohalla on DC Road and opened indiscriminate fire, injuring four members of the Christian community, including three teenagers named Bobby, Sanam and Pobail.
The fourth victim, identified as Wilson Masih, succumbed to his injuries on Tuesday. Wilson was the brother of former Balochistan Assembly Member Handery Masih, who was gunned down by his own bodyguard in 2014.
“We received four people, including three teenagers, who had received bullet injuries,” Nawab Ghous Bakhsh Raisani Memorial Hospital officials said Monday night, adding that the injured had been referred to Trauma Centre in Quetta.
People belonging to the Christian community blocked the Quetta-Karachi national highway near Mastung to protest the non-availability of ambulances in the hospital for shifting the injured children to the provincial capital. However, traffic was restored later in the evening after the deputy commissioner’s assurance.
Wilson among other injured was subsequently shifted to Quetta where he breathed his last a day later.
While the police said that the assailants fled the scene after firing and a search operation to trace the culprits was underway, reports quoted locals as complaining against the police’s inaction over reports of alleged recce by two unidentified individuals in the area for the past few days.
CHRISTIANS IN BALOCHISTAN
Although Pakistani Christians remain prone to persecution amid a record increase in incidents of violence against the vulnerable community in major parts of the country, attacks on Christians are rare in Balochistan.
In 2018, four members of a Christian family were killed in a gunfire attack on Quetta’s Shah Zaman Road. The responsibility for the attack was claimed by the militant Islamic State (IS) group.
Earlier, two suicide bombers had in December 2017 stormed a packed church located on Zarghoon Road in Quetta, killing at least 10 people and wounding up to 56, in another attack claimed by IS.
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