SUKKUR, Feb 8: Two employees of a gas exploration company Petronaz were shot dead by armed robbers when they were returning to their camp in Sardar Gharh near Khanpur Mahar in Ghotki district at around midnight on Monday.

Driver Jamil Ahmed, a resident of Ghotki, and canteen in-charge Zaheer Ahmed, of Karachi, with three Rangers personnel were on way in a van to their camp in the Sardar Gharh when the armed men tried to rob them.

When they resisted, the robbers opened fire. As a result Jamil Ahmed and Zaheer Ahmed were killed on the spot.

The Ranger personnel who accompanied them offered no resistance to robbers and escaped from the scene.

The Ghotki police were chasing the bandits but no arrest was reported till filing the report.

CONVICTED: The Anti-Terrorism Court, Sukkur and Larkana, here on Tuesday sentenced four people to two times life imprisonment and fined them Rs100,000 each in a kidnapping for ransom case.

The convicts were identified as Mukhtiar, Qambar, Zafar alias Safar and Ali Gohar Malik. They had kidnapped one Abdul Ghafoor on May 12, 2003, in Jacobabad. Police had later arrested Mukhtiar, Qambar and Zafar but Malik had escaped.

In another case of encounter with police on June 5, 2004, in Sukkur, the court awarded 25 years imprisonment to six people and imposed a fine of Rs150,000 each on them.