AFP Asia

Mumbai Indians won their second Women’s Premier League title on Saturday after a sharp performance from their bowlers and a solid knock from skipper Harmanpreet Kaur helped them beat Delhi Capitals by eight runs.The champions also fended off a valiant effort by Marizanne Kapp (40) in the second innings to secure a victory in the final over of the match at the Brabourne stadium in Mumbai.Mumbai started the final off on a rough note, after Delhi captain Meg Lanning won the toss and elected to bowl first, with Kapp striking to leave them reeling at 15-2 at the end of the fifth over.But Kaur quickly picked up the slack, stitching together an 89-run partnership with Nat Sciver-Brunt (30), before the latter fell in the 15th over.Amelia Kerr (2) and Sajeevan Sajana (0) were then dismissed quickly, while Kaur (66) herself departed in the 17th over. Some smart batting from Amanjot Kaur (14 not out) helped Mumbai finish with a flourish and post 149-7. Delhi didn’t get off to a great start either in their chase, with openers Lanning (13) and Shafali Verma (4) falling quickly to leave them at 17-2 at the end of the third over.Jemimah Rodrigues helped them rebuild, hitting 30 runs off 21 balls, but was dismissed by Kerr in the 11th over.The mantle then fell to Kapp, who valiantly smacked 40 runs off 26 balls, before falling in the 18th over. While Niki Prasad offered a glimmer of hope in the final few overs, hitting 25 runs off 23 balls, Mumbai ultimately fell short on 141-9.Kaur, also named the player of the match, called Mumbai’s win a “great team effort”.”We fought till the last ball, all about being there and doing the right things again and again,” she said.Lanning said that while Delhi had a good season, they could not “get over the line”.”Another partnership for a couple of overs might have given us a chance. We are all pretty disappointed.”

United Nations chief Antonio Guterres said Saturday the organisation is exploring the possibility of a humanitarian aid channel from Bangladesh to Myanmar.Guterres is on a four-day visit to Bangladesh that saw him meet on Friday with Rohingya refugees, threatened by looming humanitarian aid cuts.Around a million members of the persecuted and mostly Muslim minority live in squalid relief camps in Bangladesh, most of whom arrived after fleeing the 2017 military crackdown in neighbouring Myanmar.”We need to intensify humanitarian aid inside Myanmar to create a condition for that return (of the Rohingyas) to be successful,” Guterres said during a press briefing.Guterres suggested that under the right circumstances, having a “humanitarian channel” from Bangladesh would facilitate the return of the Rohingya community, but said it would require “authorisation and cooperation”.Asked if dialogue with the Arakan Army (AA), an ethnic minority rebel group in Myanmar, was essential for the repatriation of Rohingyas, Guterres said: “The Arakan Army is a reality in which we live.”He acknowledged that in the past relations with the AA have been difficult but said, “Necessary dialogue must take place”.Guterres added that engaging with the AA was important as sanctions against the group would require the UN Security Council’s approval, which could prove difficult to obtain.”It’s essential to increase pressure from all the neighbours in order to guarantee that fighting ends and the way towards democracy finally established,” Guterres said.The UN chief’s remarks came after human rights group Fortify Rights issued a statement urging the Bangladesh government to facilitate humanitarian aid and cross border trade to reach war-affected civilians in Myanmar’s Rakhine state.The AA is engaged in a fierce fight with the military for control of Rakhine, where it has seized swaths of territory in the past year, all but cutting off the state capital Sittwe.The UN’s World Food Programme said on Friday that it will be forced to cut off one million people in war-torn Myanmar from its vital food aid because of “critical funding shortfalls”.The upcoming cuts would hit 100,000 internally displaced people in Rakhine — including members of the persecuted Rohingya minority — who will “have no access to food” without its assistance, it said.Last year, the UN warned that Rakhine faces an “imminent threat of acute famine”.

Sri Lanka carried out a nationwide census Saturday of nuisance wildlife, including monkeys and peacocks, in a bid to prepare countermeasures to protect crops, officials said.Some 40,000 local officials were deployed to count wild boar, lorises, peacocks, and monkeys near farms and homes during a five-minute period on Saturday morning.In the north-central district of Anuradhapura, farmer families gathered in open fields to count the animals and record them in sheets provided by the agriculture ministry.”We are having census during a very short time period to ensure there is no double counting,” ministry official Ajith Pushpakumara told reporters in the capital Colombo.”We are expecting that the results will be about 80 percent accurate. After we have an idea of the number of these animals, we can plan out the next steps to deal with them.”In Anuradhapura, 200 kilometres (125 miles) north of Colombo, residents were out early in the fields preparing for the census.”We had a very successful count from very enthusiastic participants. They are the farmers who continuously suffer crop damage. Our count was 227 toque monkeys and 65 purple faced langurs,” Chaminda Dissanayake, an agriculture department bureaucrat who conducted the census at Anuradhapura’s Mihintale area told AFP.Opposition legislator Nalin Bandara criticised the census, calling it a “waste of money”. “This is a complete failure, a waste of money. What about the pests that attack farms at night. They are not being counted,” said Bandara, adding that newer technologies could have been deployed for the counting exercise.Officials say more than a third of crops are destroyed by wild animals, including elephants, which are protected by law as they are considered sacred.While elephants are major raiders of rice farms and fruit plantations, they were not counted in Saturday’s census.In 2023, the-then agricultural minister proposed exporting some 100,000 toque macaques to Chinese zoos, but the monkey business was abandoned following protests from environmentalists.Sri Lanka removed several species from its protected list in 2023, including all three of its monkey species as well as peacocks and wild boars, allowing farmers to kill them.

Arrested for sexually harassing a Bangladeshi university student, Asif Sardar Arnab was soon released — greeted by a cheering crowd who presented him with flower garlands and a Koran.His alleged victim was a student who enthusiastically supported the youth-led uprising that overthrew the Muslim-majority nation’s autocratic government last year.That young woman, after receiving a torrent of violent threats from religious hardliners emboldened by the political upheaval, now wonders whether she made the right choice.”A perpetrator was freed because of a mob,” she said in a social media post.”You can’t imagine the number of rape and death threats I’ve received,” added the woman, who cannot be identified due to Bangladeshi laws designed to protect sexual harassment complainants from retribution.”We made a mistake by joining the movement. So many people sacrificed their lives in vain.”Ex-premier Sheikh Hasina, ousted in last August’s revolution, took a tough stance against Islamist movements during her 15-year tenure.Her government was blamed for gruesome human rights abuses and for many, her departure heralded change.Since her exit, the hardline religiously fuelled activism that Hasina’s government had driven underground has resurfaced.Much of it is directed at Bangladeshi women, accused of failing to act with sufficient modesty.Arnab, who works at the library of the prestigious Dhaka University, was accused of accosting a student on campus, saying that her choice of attire did not sufficiently cover her breasts.The student complained, and Arnab was arrested. Supporters of Arnab who believed he had acted in appropriate deference to his religious convictions surrounded the police station and demanded his release. They yielded when a court quickly bailed Arnab — something the female student attributed to mob pressure. A spokesman for Dhaka’s police force, Md Talebur Rahman, told AFP that Arnab was still under investigation, and also acknowledged the menacing behaviour his victim had faced.”She can lodge a complaint against those who have been threatening her,” Rahman added.- ‘A crisis’ -It is far from an isolated incident. Several women’s football matches were cancelled this year after pitch invasions by Islamists angry at women’s participation in sport.Two women were briefly taken into protective custody by police this month, after an altercation that began when they were harassed for publicly smoking cigarettes by a crowd of men on their way to pray at a mosque.Islamist groups have also demanded organisers of religious commemorations and other public events remove women from the line-up.Dhaka University student Jannatul Promi, 23, said that the rising incidences of harassment had left young women feeling unsafe.”We are going through a crisis,” she said. “The other day, I was waiting for the metro when a man approached me and asked if I should be outside without a veil. As soon as I responded, more people joined him against me.”Fellow student Nishat Tanjim Nera, 24, said the authorities had failed in their duty.”Harassment incidents are happening repeatedly, but there is no redress from the government,” she said.- ‘Complete denial’ -Several recent cases of sexual violence have captured public attention.An eight-year-old girl died Thursday from wounds she sustained during a rape days earlier — a case that prompted days of protests and vigils by women in Dhaka and elsewhere. Such is the level of public anger that police have begun transporting rape suspects to court in the middle of the night, fearful of attacks. Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, who leads the interim government which replaced Hasina, condemned the “horrific acts of violence” against women. “This is deeply concerning and completely at odds with our dream of building a new Bangladesh,” he said.Yunus’s administration has struggled to restore law and order, with many police officers refusing to return to work and the army brought in to help.It has since last month also directed scant police resources to a sweeping crackdown, dubbed Operation Devil Hunt, against gangs allegedly connected to Hasina and working to foment unrest.Maleka Banu, of the feminist campaign group Bangladesh Mahila Parishad, said those resources would have been better spent on trying to curb sexual violence. “What good is it for the government to simply express concern? We expected action,” she said.”After Sheikh Hasina’s fall, a series of violent incidents followed. The government was in complete denial… Now, they claim the fallen dictator is behind every crime.”

UN chief Antonio Guterres said Friday the organisation would do “everything” to prevent food rations being cut for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.Guterres met with Rohingya refugees in the camps in Cox’s Bazar for a show of solidarity and broke the fast for the Islamic holy month of Ramadan with the mostly Muslim persecuted minority.Many of the one million refugees that live in the squalid relief camps escaped war in neighbouring Myanmar after the 2017 military crackdown and are now threatened by dire humanitarian aid cuts.  Guterres said “dramatic” cuts in humanitarian aid announced by the United States and other countries meant there was a “risk to cut food rations in this camp”.”I can promise that we will do everything to avoid it and I will be talking to all countries in the world that can support us in order to make sure that funds are made available to avoid a situation in which people would suffer even more and that some people would even die,” Guterres said. More than 100,000 participated in the fast-breaking sunset meal with Guterres, with a few of them holding placards that said, “No more refugee life” and, “We are Rohingyas, not stateless.” Guterres said it was “essential” that peace is reestablished in Myanmar, the “rights of the Rohingyas are respected”, and that “discrimination and persecution like the one we have witnessed in the past, will end”.He was accompanied by members of Dhaka’s interim government, including its chief advisor, Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus. US President Donald Trump imposed a freeze on foreign aid in January pending a review, sending shockwaves through the humanitarian community.Aid funding shortfalls would require a cut in monthly food vouchers from $12.50 to $6.00 per person at the camps, the UN World Food Programme announced this month.Successive aid cuts have already caused intense hardship among Rohingya in the overcrowded settlements, who are reliant on aid and suffer from rampant malnutrition.The UN children’s agency UNICEF said youngsters in the camps were experiencing the worst levels of malnutrition since 2017, with admissions for severe malnutrition treatment up 27 percent in February compared with the same months in 2024.UNICEF’s representative in Bangladesh Rana Flowers said that cancelled US grants for Bangladesh accounted for around a quarter of her agency’s Rohingya refugee response costs.Bangladesh has struggled to support its refugee population, and Dhaka has said it is exploring ways to secure additional aid for Rohingya refugees.Guterres, who held talks with Yunus earlier on Friday in Dhaka, said he appreciated the “close cooperation” between the UN and Dhaka.Rohingya living in the camps around Cox’s Bazar are not allowed to seek employment and are almost entirely dependent on limited humanitarian aid to survive.Bangladesh is still reeling from its own political crisis after a student-led revolution last year culminated in the overthrow of long-time ruler Sheikh Hasina and her government.Guterres expressed his “solidarity with Bangladesh’s reform and transition process”. 

Sri Lanka’s wildlife and railway authorities announced on Friday a series of low-tech measures, including adjusting timetables to reduce night-time train collisions, following the worst wildlife accident that killed seven elephants.The measures came after seven elephants were run over on February 20 by an express train near a wildlife reserve in Habarana, some 180 kilometres (110 miles) east of the capital Colombo, making it the worst accident of its kind.Authorities said they had identified vulnerable stretches of railway tracks in elephant-inhabited forest areas in the island’s northern and eastern regions, and mitigation measures were already underway.”We have started clearing shrubs on either side of the tracks to allow drivers to see more clearly if herds are near,” railway spokesman V. S. Polwattage told reporters in Colombo.He said fewer trains were being operated at night in areas prone to accidents involving wildlife. Authorities were also deploying power-set trains, which have better braking power, to minimise collisions.No passengers were injured in the February 20 incident, but services were disrupted for almost a day.Wildlife Conservation Director Manjula Amararathna said authorities had also begun filling gaps between sleepers — the logs that sit in parallel under the rail — to prevent elephants from getting stuck if they attempted to escape approaching trains.”We are also using solar-powered lights to illuminate the tracks and are in the process of installing motion sensors that will alert drivers to wild animals on the tracks,” Amararathna said.He said 138 elephants had been killed by trains in the past 17 years since authorities began collecting data.Two weeks ago, the government announced that 1,195 people and 3,484 animals had been killed in a decade due to the worsening human-elephant conflict on the island.Killing or harming elephants is a criminal offence in Sri Lanka, which has an estimated 7,000 wild elephants, considered a national treasure partly due to their significance in Buddhist culture.However, the killings continue as desperate farmers struggle with elephants raiding their crops and destroying livelihoods.Many elephants have been electrocuted, shot, and poisoned. Sometimes, explosive-laden fruits are used to maim the animals, often resulting in painful deaths.

UN chief Antonio Guterres met with Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh Friday, some of the one million people who escaped war in neighbouring Myanmar who are now threatened by dire humanitarian aid cuts.The UN secretary-general is in the camps in Cox’s Bazar for a show of solidarity, and will break the fast for the Islamic holy month of Ramadan with the mostly Muslim persecuted minority.Many of the refugees have lived in the squalid relief camps since fleeing the 2017 military crackdown in Myanmar.More than 100,000 refugees are expected to participate in the fast-breaking sunset meal with Guterres, who is accompanied by members of Dhaka’s interim government, including its chief advisor, Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus.US President Donald Trump imposed a freeze on foreign aid in January pending a review, sending shockwaves through the humanitarian community.Aid funding shortfalls would require a cut in monthly food vouchers from $12.50 to $6.00 per person at the camps, the UN World Food Programme announced earlier this month.Successive aid cuts have already caused intense hardship among Rohingya in the overcrowded settlements, who are reliant on aid and suffer from rampant malnutrition.The UN children’s agency UNICEF said youngsters in the camps were experiencing the worst levels of malnutrition since 2017, with admissions for severe malnutrition treatment up 27 percent in February compared with the same months in 2024.UNICEF’s representative in Bangladesh Rana Flowers said that cancelled US grants for Bangladesh accounted for around a quarter of her agency’s Rohingya refugee response costs.Bangladesh has struggled to support its refugee population, and Dhaka has said it is exploring ways to secure additional aid for the Rohingya refugees.Guterres, who held talks with Yunus earlier on Friday in Dhaka, said he appreciated the “close cooperation” between the UN and Dhaka.Rohingya living in the camps around Cox’s Bazar are not allowed to seek employment and are almost entirely dependent on limited humanitarian aid to survive.Bangladesh is still reeling from its own political crisis after a student-led revolution last year culminated in the overthrow of long-time ruler Sheikh Hasina and her government.Guterres expressed his “solidarity with Bangladesh’s reform and transition process”. 

In a desert town in Pakistan, Hindus prepare meals for fasting Muslims, who in turn gather to welcome a Holi procession, a rare moment of religious solidarity in the Islamic nation.Discrimination against minorities runs deep in Muslim-majority Pakistan, but those tensions are not to be found in Mithi, an affluent city of rolling sand dunes and mud-brick homes in southern Sindh province.”All the traditions and rituals here are celebrated together,” Raj Kumar, a 30-year-old Hindu businessman told AFP.”You will see that on Holi, Hindu youth are joined by Muslim youth, celebrating together and applying colours on each other,” he added. “Even at the end of the Muslim call for prayer, the imam says ‘peace to Hindus and Muslims’.”This year, the Hindu festival of Holi and the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan fell together. Both events move each year according to the lunar calendar. Holi, the festival of colour, has for centuries marked the arrival of spring and raucous crowds playfully throw coloured powder and water over each other.On Thursday, hundreds of Hindus held a procession through the streets of Mithi, one of the few towns where they form the majority, to be warmly welcomed at the city square by their Muslim neighbours. “We have learnt to live together since childhood. This has come to us through generations, and we are following it too,” said local Mohan Lal Mali, 53, after arranging a meal for Muslims to break their fast.Cows, considered sacred in Hinduism, roam freely through the streets of Mithi, while women wear traditional embroidered sarees embellished with mirror work. There is no beef shop in town, as its meat is prohibited in Hinduism, and Muslims only sacrifice goats during festivals.Mithi, a city of around 60,000 people, is predominantly Hindu — in a country where 96 percent of its 240 million people are Muslim and two percent are Hindu.Fozia Haseeb, a Christian woman, travelled from the port city of Karachi, around 320 kilometres (200 miles) away, to witness the blended occasions.”People following three religions are here: Christians, Hindus and Muslims,” she said.”We wanted to see for ourselves whether this was correct, and there is no doubt it is.”- ‘No divisions among us’ -Ramadan is a month of peaceful prayer and reflection in Islam, and Hindus respected their Muslim neighbours would not join Holi celebrations with the usual fervour due to religious observance.”Today, you might not see colours on me, but in the past, they would drench me in colours,” said Muslim cleric Babu Aslam Qaimkhani while applying powder to the face of local Hindu MP Mahesh Kumar Malani.”If a Hindu runs for office, Muslims also vote for them, and vice versa,” said Malani, the only elected minority MP in the country’s national assembly.As Hindus celebrated with processions and visits to temples, there was no armed security — a stark contrast to other parts of Pakistan.Freedom of religion or belief remains under constant threat in the country, with religiously motivated violence and discrimination increasing yearly, according to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. State authorities, often using religious unrest for political gain, have failed to address this crisis, the commission said.But in Mithi, 19-year-old Muslim labourer Amaan Ullah told AFP: “There are no divisions among us. We all are humans, and we all are equal.”Local police and administration officials said the city has a low crime rate, with “no major security challenges”, allowing them to easily make arrangements for the major religious festivals.”Their businesses, their daily lives, and their interactions have been together for centuries and they are still standing strong,” said local official Abdul Haleem Jagirani.- ‘A slight sense of fear’ -Locals say Mithi’s peaceful existence can be traced back to its remote location, emerging from the sand dunes of the Tharparkar desert, which borders the modern Indian state of Rajasthan.With infertile soil and limited water access, it was spared from centuries of looting and wars, and the bloody Partition violence of 1947 when India and Pakistan were created, and many Hindus fled across the new border. But several residents told AFP that in recent years the prosperous city has seen a rise in newcomers as a result of its growing infrastructure.A major coal project nearby has brought labourers from other provinces to the city, and with it, supporters of a radical Islamist party. On the city’s central square, a large banner hangs for Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), which put the explosive issue of blasphemy as its central concern.”People coming from outside the city are causing some doubt and a slight sense of fear,” Padma Lodha, a 52-year-old Hindu headmistress at a local girls school, told AFP.”But overall, things are still well-controlled and peaceful.”

Nepali police officer Jiwan Subba still feels pangs of regret decades after he bludgeoned a strange creature he found wandering in his barn, not realising it was an endangered red panda.Red pandas may share a similar name to giant pandas — due to their bamboo diet — but the copper-hued mammals with raccoon-like features are much smaller, typically the size of a house cat. “I was 17 and had no idea what it was. Nobody in our village even knew,” Subba, now 48, told AFP.Today, he is not only aware of the red panda’s vulnerability but is actively involved in its protection — reflecting a broader shift in attitudes spurred by Nepal’s extensive community awareness programmes. “I once took a life out of ignorance, but now I work to prevent others from making the same mistake,” he said. “People now understand that red pandas are a protected species.”Officials say that Nepal’s pioneering community-based conservation work has helped arrest the decline of the cute but skittish bamboo-eaters, which number fewer than 10,000 globally.Red Panda Network, an organisation leading global efforts to conserve the animal, estimates between 500 and 1,000 of the species live in Nepal.That is an almost certain increase from an estimated population of somewhere between 300 and 600 by the Himalayan republic’s wildlife department in 2011. “Now, villagers say they can see three or four red pandas on the same day,” Red Panda Network’s Ang Phuri Sherpa told AFP. – ‘Undisturbed’ -Conservationists say that educational outreach combined with sustainable livelihood programmes has helped improve the effectiveness of Nepal’s conservation efforts.In eastern Nepal, Indigenous inhabitants of the Kanchenjunga Conservation Area switched from raising livestock to cultivating nettle plants to minimise disturbances to red panda habitats.”We have stopped foraging in the forest so red pandas remain undisturbed,” said Chandra Kumari Limbu, a local working on conservation efforts.Instead, the rhythmic clap of looms now fills the village from women weaving nettle fabric into school bags, wallets and clothing. “This has empowered women here who did not have an income before. And at the same time we are letting red pandas thrive,” Limbu told AFP.Nepal last year also declared a new conservation zone in the country’s east to protect red pandas.The Puwamajhuwa Community Red Panda Conservation Area, spanning 116 hectares (287 acres), has dedicated anti-poaching and smuggling control committees with local involvement.- Poaching and infrastructure – Nepali authorities have confiscated 33 red panda hides from smugglers in the past five years, a drop from 70 hides from 2011-15.”The number of red panda hides being smuggled has significantly come down, mainly due to weaker smuggling networks and lower profits,” police spokesperson Dinesh Kumar Acharya told AFP. Nepal has strict punishments for poachers of protected species, including prison sentences of up to 10 years. Conservationists warn however that many poaching incidents go undetected or unpunished. Red panda hides are mainly smuggled to China and Myanmar for their supposed medicinal qualities and aesthetic value, according to police. Their copper-coloured fur, cherubic appearance and small size also make them easy candidates for the exotic pet trade.According to an assessment from the International Union for Conservation for Nature (IUCN), interest in red pandas as pets may have grown partly because of the preponderance of “cute” images of the animals shared on social media.The IUCN has listed the mammal as an endangered species since 2016 and says they face high risk of extinction due to habitat loss.Sherpa of the Red Panda Network said growing infrastructure development in Nepal was posing further challenges for conservation efforts. “Road networks, hydroelectricity, transmission lines and cable car construction is going on, and because of these, habitats have been fragmented,” he said. Residents in Taplejung district, a key red panda habitat, are currently protesting the mass felling of thousands of trees for a new cable car project aimed at promoting tourism in the area.”The government should take extra cautious measures when constructing large infrastructure projects,” local conservationist Rajindra Mahat told AFP. “It is an endangered species worldwide, so it is our shared responsibility to protect it.” 

The bodies of at least 25 people, including 21 hostages, killed in a train siege by separatist gunmen in Pakistan were retrieved from the site on Thursday ahead of the first funerals, officials said.Security forces said they freed more than 340 train passengers in a two-day rescue operation that ended late on Wednesday after a separatist group bombed a remote railway track in mountainous southwest Balochistan and stormed a train with around 450 passengers on board.The assault was claimed by the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), one of a number of separatist groups that accuse outsiders of plundering natural resources in Balochistan near the borders with Afghanistan and Iran.Death tolls have varied, with the military saying in an official statement that “21 innocent hostages” were killed by the militants as well as four soldiers in the rescue operation.A railway official in Balochistan said the bodies of 25 people were transported by train away from the hostage site to the nearby town of Mach on Thursday morning.”Deceased were identified as 19 military passengers, one police and one railway official, while four bodies are yet to be identified,” the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP.A senior local military official overseeing operations confirmed the details.An army official, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, earlier put the military toll at 28, including 27 off-duty soldiers taken hostage.Passengers who escaped from the siege said after walking for hours through rugged mountains to reach safety that they saw people being shot dead by militants.The first funerals were expected to take place on Thursday evening, after the Muslim-majority nation broke its daily fast, for the holy month Ramadan. Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif arrived in the provincial capital of Quetta to meet with security officials, his office said. “The Prime Minister expressed grief and sorrow over the martyrdom of security personnel and train passengers during the operation,” according to a statement.- ‘Our women pleaded’ -The BLA released a video of an explosion on the track followed by dozens of militants emerging from hiding places in the mountains to attack the train.Attacks by separatist groups have soared in the past few years, mostly targeting security forces and ethnic groups from outside the province. Muhammad Naveed, who managed to escape, told AFP: “They asked us to come out of the train one by one. They separated women and asked them to leave. They also spared elders.””They asked us to come outside, saying we will not be harmed. When around 185 people came outside, they chose people and shot them down.”Babar Masih, a 38-year-old Christian labourer, told AFP on Wednesday he and his family walked for hours through rugged mountains to reach a train that could take them to a makeshift hospital on a railway platform.”Our women pleaded with them and they spared us,” he said.”They told us to get out and not look back. As we ran, I noticed many others running alongside us.”Security forces have been battling a decades-long insurgency in impoverished Balochistan but last year saw a surge in violence in the province compared with 2023, according to the independent Center for Research and Security Studies.