QUETTA: Police on Thursday found the bodies of seven coal miners who were kidnapped last week in Pakistan's insurgency-torn southwestern province of Baluchistan, officials said.
The miners were abducted on July 7 in the Soorang area, 25 kilometres east of the provincial capital Quetta, and their bullet-ridden bodies were found dumped on a roadside in the hills of nearby Degari, administration official Zafar Bokhari told AFP.
The Baluchistan Liberation Army, which is fighting for independence from the federal government, had claimed responsibility for their kidnapping but there was no claim for their deaths, Bokhari said.
The miners were from the Swat valley, which is part of the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, he added.
Local police said the miners had been shot dead overnight.
On Wednesday, Chief Justice of Pakistan, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, accused paramilitary forces of involvement in a third of all disappearances in Baluchistan, where the military has been accused of rights violations in its bid to put down the insurgency.
