Violence Rocks Balochistan
By Nirupama Subramanian
30 August, 2006
The HinduISLAMABAD: At least four persons were killed in a bomb blast as violence rocked the Balochistan province of Pakistan for the third straight day on Tuesday after funeral prayers for the slain Jahmoori Watan Party (JWP) leader Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti.
The blast in Hub, an industrial town close to the Sind border and its capital Karachi, also left several people wounded.
Family, friends, senior political figures and Bugti tribesmen gathered at a stadium in Quetta, Baloch capital, and held a ghaibane janaaza, a funeral conducted without the body.
Politicians present
Talal Bugti, a son of the Nawab, was present, as were tribal leader Ataullah Mengal, former Chief Minister of the province, and Elahi Buksh Somroo, former Speaker of the National Assembly.The Bugti family made it clear on Monday night that it did not want anyone from the provincial government, a coalition of the Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid) and the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, to attend.
On the rampage
Soon after the funeral, there was anger against the Government for Bugti's killing and for the delay in handing over the body to his family.Mourners destroyed a portrait of Pakistan founder Mohammed Ali Jinnah inside the stadium, reports said. Television footage showed men smashing windows in the stadium.
Outside, two crude bombs went off but no one was hurt. Government buildings, private companies and banks were either set ablaze or vandalised. ATM machines were looted. Protesters pulled out computers from offices and smashed them on the roads. In many places, the national flag was burnt.
The protesters appeared to defy President Pervez Musharraf's warning on Monday that anyone who wanted to fight Pakistan would have to fight him first. After an exchange of fire in which two policemen were injured, the police fired teargas shells to disperse mobs in the heart of Quetta. In a Punjabi-dominated part of the city, vandals destroyed many shops.
The worst violence was reported from Mastung, where Government offices, including that of the Election Commission, were set ablaze. Incidents were also reported from Kalat and Gwadar, and in Turbat, the police arrested nearly 100 people.
The delay by the Government in producing Bugti's body added fuel to the fire, and made people and politicians raise doubts about the official version of his death. The Government said it was still looking for the body under the rubble of the cave in the Bhambore Hills of Kohlu, where the military carried out the operation on Saturday. The Inter-Services Public Relations Director-General, Major General Shaukat Sultan, told a press conference that it would take another four or five days for the security forces to find the body. But JWP spokesman Amanullah Khan claimed that the body was in the Quetta military hospital, a charge immediately denied by the Government.
Politician Sherbaz Khan Mazari, a close friend of Bugti, said in a press statement that the Baloch leader was killed in an open encounter, and the story of the collapsing cave was "creative fiction." He claimed that the body had been taken to Islamabad.
Copyright © 2006, The Hindu.
