The bodies of six labourers who had been abducted in Balochistan's Kech district have been recovered near Turbat, police and the provincial home department said, in the latest in a series of attacks on non-local workers in the province.

The bodies were found in the Nasirabad area on the outskirts of Turbat and shifted to the Teaching Hospital Turbat for post-mortem examinations and legal formalities. Hospital sources said all six had been shot dead.

Balochistan Home Department media adviser Babar Yousafzai confirmed that the bodies recovered from Nasirabad were those of the labourers abducted days earlier from the Kalatak area of Kech. Police said the men had been working at a construction site and described them as non-local workers from Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Turbat police identified the six as Muhammad Ali, son of Zari Khan, a resident of Loralai; Nabi, son of Noor Khan, of Haripur; and Muhammad Arshad, son of Muhammad Sharif, Muhammad Ayoub, son of Muhammad Rafiq, Muhammad Wazir, son of Rahm Afghan, and Muhammad Parvez, son of Muhammad Saleem all residents of Mian Channu in Lodhran district.

The labourers were seized on Monday when armed men blocked the Turbat - Mand Road in the Kalatak area, about 32 kilometres from Turbat, and intercepted the vehicle they were travelling in, officials said. The workers, all non-locals employed on a development project, were forced from the vehicle.

According to police, one labourer identified as Javed Khan, a resident of Swabi in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was shot dead at the scene, and a local passer-by, Abdul Razzaq, was also killed when the gunmen opened fire. Six other labourers were taken to an unknown location, and their bodies were recovered days later.

No group claimed responsibility. Police said security forces had cordoned off the area, begun collecting evidence, and launched a search operation to trace the attackers.

The killings come days after five non-local labourers, also working on development projects, were reported killed in the Mashkel area of Washuk district. In the same week, a deputy superintendent of police was killed in an attack in Barkhan and workers were abducted in a separate incident in Khuzdar, amid a wider deterioration in security in parts of Balochistan.

Attacks on non-local workers in the province have in the past been attributed to Baloch separatist groups, though no group claimed the Kech killings.

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