Balochistan: Locals furious after another drone attack by Pak forces kills four civilians

Quetta, Aug 23 (IANS) Human rights body Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC) on Saturday strongly condemned the drone attack by Pakistani forces on civilians in Balochistan’s Mastung district that killed four people and injured three others, describing the incident as “state terrorism”.

The remarks came after a drone strike hit an orchard in the Khadkucha area of Mastung on Friday, killing four workers on the spot and injuring three others, local media reported citing sources.

The attack came just days after the Pakistani Air Force reportedly carried out indiscriminate bombardment in residential areas in the Gidar area of Balochistan’s Surab district, killing more than 30 civilians, including women and children, and injuring several others.

Calling the targeting of hardworking laborers through a drone strike the “most severe escalation in the state’s brutality and oppression” against the Baloch people, the BYC said, “Their killing has not just taken four lives, but has also robbed four families of their support, their hopes, and their future at the hands of state terrorism“.

The rights body noted that the use of fighter jets, drones, and other military forces against ordinary civilians in Balochistan exposed the Pakistani policy of “carrying out the indiscriminate massacre of the Baloch people solely on the basis of their Baloch identity.”

Under this policy, the BYC said, neither the labourer working in the orchard for his livelihood nor the child sleeping in a cradle is safe in Balochistan.

“We make it clear to the Baloch people that the state has intensified its policy of the indiscriminate massacre of the Baloch people to the worst degree. The only means to stop this genocide is national resistance, and nothing else. The Baloch people must come out onto the streets collectively in the hundreds of thousands and defeat state power,” it added.

On Thursday, the Baloch National Movement (BNM) organised a protest demonstration and rally in the Netherlands condemning the recent airstrikes by the Pakistan air force in Surab district.

Addressing the rally, the BNM activists described the Surab attack as a severe “humanitarian tragedy” and criticised the international community’s silence over what they described as the growing threats to civilian lives across Balochistan. They stressed that human rights conditions in the province have been deteriorating rapidly.

Expressing deep concern over civilian casualties, including women and children, the demonstrators urged international bodies to take immediate notice of the bombardment in Surab and bring those responsible to justice.

“Participants appealed to the United Nations, the European Union, and global human rights organizations to conduct an independent and transparent investigation into the Surab incident to establish the facts. They also called on Dutch civil society, political leaders, and European nations to pay attention to ongoing rights violations in Balochistan and advocate for the affected families,” the BNM stated.

–IANS

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