Truck driver thought dead in Pakistan roadside attack recovers in hospital

By Saleem Ahmad

QUETTA (Reuters) - A Pakistani truck driver, who rescuers initially thought was dead, was recovering on Tuesday after hospital staff receiving bodies realised he was alive despite being shot five times in one of the most widespread attacks by ethnic militants in years.

On Monday, Munir Ahmed was driving with three colleagues in a convoy of four trucks through the southern province of Balochistan.

The drivers did not notice anything amiss and had not heard of any violence until they were about an hour outside of the provincial capital, Quetta.

Suddenly, armed men crowded the dusty stretch of highway, waving at them to stop, ordering the drivers out of their trucks and lining them up on the roadside.

Ahmed, 50, began to recite Islamic verses in fear.

"We were all horrified," he said.

The gunmen opened fire and threw the men's bodies into a stream, leaving them for dead.

Meanwhile attackers along other roads were stopping buses, pulling off passengers and killing men in front of their families, the provincial chief minister later said.

The Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), an armed militant group seeking secession of the resource-rich province bordering Iran and Afghanistan, took responsibility for the assaults.

Authorities said at least 70 people were killed in the attacks and subsequent military operations, including 23 civilians pulled out of their vehicles.

Rescuers put Ahmed and the lifeless bodies of his three colleagues into a vehicle to take to hospital, where medical staff realised he had survived.

A nurse said he had been hit by five bullets in the arm and back but was in stable condition.

Lying flat in a hospital bed, far from home in Punjab with his arm heavily bandaged, Ahmed said his memory of the attack was hazy and he was upset by his colleagues' deaths, uncertain what would happen next after such a violent disruption to his livelihood.

(Reporting by Saleem Ahmad in Quetta; Writing by Charlotte Greenfield in Islamabad; Editing by Sharon Singleton)