Security forces kill 9 Baloch militants in raid
ISLAMABAD:PAKISTANI security forces shot and killed nine alleged insurgents on Saturday during a raid on their hideout in southwestern Balochistan province, the military said.
A military statement said security forces conducted a raid on members of the separatist Baluchistan Liberation Army (BLA) in the province’s Kohlu district. They had received information that militants involved in a recent atack on security forces in Balochistan and a bombing in Kohlu Bazaar that killed two civilians and wounded 19 in September were hiding and planning more atacks.
There was no immediate statement from the BLA and an atempt to reach its spokesman was not immediately successful.
The military said that as security forces surrounded them, the militants opened fire starting an hourslong shootout that ended in the deaths of nine insurgents and the arrest of three wounded suspects. A search operation was underway in the area to eliminate any other militant hideout, it said. The military provided no further details.
‘TEMPORAILY’ HALTED: The joint investigation team (JIT) probing into the atack on the Pakistan Tehrik-e-insaf (PTI) chairman and former prime minister Imran Khan at his long march Wazirabad on Nov. 3 has stopped working following the Federal Service Tribunal (FST) reinstating the suspension order of its head, Ghulam Mahmood Dogar, who is the Lahore police chief.
Officials said the issuance of instructions to the JIT had “temporarily” been halted. They added that in the last few days, the JIT had been unable to achieve much except the interrogation of the main suspect, Naveed Ahmad. Legal experts are of the view that a suspended official cannot head a JIT.
Lahore Capital City Police Officer (CCPO) Dogar was suspended by the federal government through a notification issued on Nov.5. He will be considered suspended from that date now.
The Punjab government had appointed Dogar as the head of the JIT investigating the Wazirabad attack.
The FST has issued its detailed verdict on the government’s plea against the Lahore CCPO’S reinstatement. It upheld the federal government’s decision to suspend Dogar on the grounds that he was unable to provide adequate security to the Punjab Governor’s House during a protest held in the wake of the atack on the PTI’S rally.
A two-member bench of the FST Islamabad, headed by its chairman Rana Zahid Mahmood and member Mohammad Javed Ghani, suspended an earlier decision of reinstating Dogar and ordered the formation of a larger bench to hear the case.