QUETTA / GWADAR: The bodies of six of the seven labourers who were kidnapped earlier this week in the Turbat city of Balochistan’s Kech district were found with bullet wounds on Thursday.
On Tuesday, unidentified armed men had blocked the Turbat-Mand Road in the Kalatak area of Kech district and abducted the seven labourers, who were travelling in a vehicle.
The kidnappers killed one of the labourers on the same day and dumped his body on the highway. He was identified as Muhammad Javed.
On Thursday, the bodies of the remaining six labourers were also found, Balochistan Home Department official 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 killed the remaining six labourers, whose bodies were found in Turbat’s Nasirabad area, he added.
Mr Yousafzai said the bodies bore torture marks and bullet wounds, and it appeared 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. Their bodies were shifted to the District Headquarters Hospital in Turbat for post-mortem examination, he said.
Police identified the labourers from Punjab as Muhammad Arshad from Lodhran and Muhammad Taimor, Muhammad Wazir and Muhammad Pervez from Bahawalpur.
Those belonging to KP were identified as Muhammad Majid from Buner and Muhammad Yahya from Swabi.
Meanwhile, Balochistan Chief Minister Mir Sarfraz Bugti strongly condemned the killings, blaming terrorists for the incident, which he described as linked to Fitna al-Hindustan — a term the state uses to refer to groups it accuses of being sponsored by India to carry out terrorist attacks on Pakistani soil.
Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi also strongly denounced the killing of the labourers by “Fitna al-Hindustan terrorists”.
Published in Dawn, July 31st, 2026
