ISLAMABAD: Gunmen on a motorcycle shot dead a minister in Balochistan province on Sunday, officials said.
Shafiq Ahmed Khan, the education minister in the provincial government, was wounded in the head and died on the way to hospital in Quetta.
A spokesman for a separatist group telephoned the Online news agency to claim responsibility for the killing, the news agency said. Separatist rebels have been waging a low-level insurgency for decades in the gas-rich southwestern province.
According to initial reports Khan, a member of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party, was entering his house located at Tail Godown when the unknown assailant opened fire. Hidayatull Jaafar, a close friend who was accompanying Khan, was seriously injured in the attack.
Chief Minister of Balochistan Nawab Aslam Raisani, who was in Islamabad to attend a high-level meeting, immediately left for Quetta to assess the situation.
In the South Waziristan, Pakistani forces bombed Taleban on Sunday, a day after the army said it had captured a strategic town on an approach to the militants’ main base area.
The latest bombardment in the week-old offensive was against militant bases in the three villages of Sam, Badr and Ladha, government and security officials said.
“It was intense bombing and later helicopter gunships attacked,” said an intelligence agency official who declined to be identified. Several militant hideouts had been destroyed in the bombing, said a government official, adding he had no information about casualties.
Soldiers are advancing on the militants’ main stronghold area from three directions.
Army chief Gen. Ashfaq Kayani visited troops in the region’s main town of Wana and said the battle was not against any tribe but a “handful of terrorists” who had made people “hostage to their anti-state agenda,” the army said.
In Islamabad, visiting Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and his Pakistani counterpart, Yusuf Raza Gilani, said they would work together to fight terrorism.
— With input from agencies
