QUETTA/ GWADAR: The bodies of six of seven labourers who were kidnapped earlier this week in the Turbat city of Balochistan’s Kech district were found with bullet wounds on Thursday, an official told Dawn.

On Tuesday, unidentified armed men had blocked Turbat-Mand Road in the Kalatak area of Kech district and taken away the seven labourers, who were travelling in a vehicle.

The kidnappers had killed one of the labourers the same day and dumped his body on a highway.

On Thursday, the bodies of the remaining six labourers were also found, Balochistan Home Department spokesperson Babar Yousafzai told Dawn.

He said the kidnappers had taken the labourers to an undisclosed location, where one of them was killed shortly after the abduction and his body was dumped on the highway.

They later also killed the six remaining labourers, whose bodies were found in Turbat’s Nasirabad area, he added.

Yousafzai said the bodies bore torture marks and bullet wounds, and it seemed that the labourers had been shot at close range.

According to him, four of the deceased were from Punjab and two from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

They were working on a development project in Kech district, and their bodies were taken to the district headquarters hospital in Turbat for autopsy, he said.

Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi strongly condemned the killing of the six labourers “by Fitna al-Hindustan terrorists” — a term the state uses to refer to groups it accuses of being sponsored by India to execute terrorist attacks on Pakistani soil.

Expressing his condolences to the bereaved families, the minister said the terrorists “demonstrated the worst brutality” by murdering the labourers.

He also termed the incident an “attack on Balochistan’s progress and employment for the public”.

Naqvi asserted that the “beasts who brutally murdered six non-local labourers deserved no leniency”.

Balochistan has been facing security challenges, and a monthly security assessment released in early June by the Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies (PICSS) said that after two consecutive months of improvement, Pakistan’s security situation deteriorated sharply in May, driven primarily by escalating terrorist violence in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan.

The report said Balochistan emerged as the most affected province during the month. The province recorded 71 terrorist attacks, compared with 34 in April, representing a 109pc increase.

The deteriorating security situation was further reflected in a surge in kidnappings, it said. Of the 54 abductions reported nationwide during May, 52 occurred in Balochistan alone, highlighting the growing operational reach and confidence of terrorist groups in the province, it said.

Four employees of a private construction company were also kidnapped from the province’s Khuzdar district the same day when the seven labourers were kidnapped. The officials included a project manager, a surveyor and a technical lab assistant, who were working on a flood protection project in the Karkh area of Khuzdar.

Last week, three excise officials were abducted at gunpoint following an attack on their department’s checkpost on the Dalbandin–Taftan Highway in Balochistan’s Chagai district.

According to sources, around 30 armed men had surrounded the checkpost that was set up temporarily for routine checking, held the officials on duty at gunpoint and later abducted them. The sources added that the attackers also took away two official vehicles and weapons.