Unidentified armed men gunned down two people while bodies of two others were recovered from different parts of the province on Monday.

According to police, unidentified armed men shot dead a man in the Kali Kabeer area of Quetta. The body was shifted to hospital for post-mortem where the identity of the deceased has yet to be confirmed.

250 Afghan citizens have been apprehended for allegedly not having travel documents from check post in Mian Ghundi area of the provincial capital. According to the police, security forces raided four passenger buses, traveling from Quetta to Pichgor, and detained 250 Afghan citizens for not having travel documents.

The Afghan citizens were trying to illegally visit Iran. The detainees have been taken to new Sariab police station.

Just as political efforts to stabilise Afghanistan gather pace, the Quetta-based Taliban have started to show signs of flexibility towards dialogue, according to the head of a provincial Afghan peace council.

“From what I’ve heard from Afghan tribal elders who have met former Taliban commanders ‘in their individual capacity’, they’re willing to talk peace,” said Haji Ata Muhammad Ahmadi, chairman of the provincial peace council in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar.

In a tiny flat they have rented in Quetta, Zarnab Bibi and her husband Aziz Khan (not their real name) waiting patiently for the phone to ring. “We are hoping to hear from an agent we have paid to take us and our four children to Thailand and then maybe onto Australia,” Khan was quoted as saying by IRIN, the UN information unit in a report.

The family left its home in Afghanistan’s conflict-ridden Kandahar Province about a month ago, crossing into Pakistan illegally via a mountain pass. They spoke of a long walk on foot and said they spent all their savings on the journey.

More than 500 people took to streets in southwestern Pakistan on Thursday to condemn the burning of Quran at a US airbase in Afghanistan. The protestors, mainly from religious groups and political parties, shouted “Down with US, down with Obama, friends of America are traitors,” as they gathered in Quetta, an AFP reporter said.

Quetta is the capital of oil-and-gas rich Balochistan province that borders Afghanistan and Iran.

Afghan officials are holding talks with the Taliban in Pakistan, the head of a provincial peace council in the insurgency’s heartland Kandahar said on Tuesday, in a possible signal that Islamabad is boosting its support for Afghan peace efforts.

Kandahar peace council’s chairman Ata Mohammad Ahmadi said the officials had been meeting for “some time” with mid-level Taliban commanders in Quetta, where the leadership of the militant group is reported to be based.

A trader was shot dead by a group of armed men during a kidnapping bid in the Mission Road area on Tuesday morning.

Zohaib Bora, the owner of a banquet hall and a shop in Quetta, was on his way to the shop along with his son when a group of armed men intercepted him on Mission Road. He reportedly resorted to resistance, upon which the would-be kidnappers opened fire, killing him instantly. Witnesses said the assassins fled the scene right after the murder, while the victim’s son remained unhurt in the incident. The body was handed over to the heirs after legal formalities.