Mohammad Jan Shahbaz Samalani, who worked for a Quetta-based local Urdu language daily newspaper, was targeted by armed motorcyclists while he on his way to a market from his house in Kalat, near Quetta. (Representational image) Mohammad Jan Shahbaz Samalani, who worked for a Quetta-based local Urdu language daily newspaper, was targeted by armed motorcyclists while he on his way to a market from his house in Kalat, near Quetta. (Representational image)

A Pakistani journalist has been gunned down by motorcycle-borne unidentified gunmen in a hit-and-run incident in Pakistan’s restive Balochistan province, officials said today. Mohammad Jan Shahbaz Samalani, 37, who worked for a Quetta-based local Urdu language daily newspaper, was targeted yesterday by armed motorcyclists while he on his way to a market from his house in Kalat, about 160 kilometres from the provincial capital Quetta.

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“The attackers opened fired on Samalani, leaving him seriously wounded,” Kalat District Police Officer Lal Jan Baloch told ‘Dawn’, adding that the attackers had fled the scene.

The officer said police had shifted the wounded reporter to a hospital where he died.

Besides being a reporter, Samalani taught at a government school in Kalat.

His body was handed over to the family after medico-legal formalities.

The cause of the killing has not yet been ascertained, but a probe is under way, police said.

Balochistan Union of Journalists and Quetta Press Club office-bearers condemned Samalani’s killing and have asked the government to arrest the culprits without any delay, the report said.

Pakistan is among the world’s most dangerous countries for journalists.

Over 40 journalists, including TV cameramen, have lost their lives in different areas of Balochistan in targeted killing and suicide bombings over the past 10 years.

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