QUETTA/KARACHI: At least 53 people, including 19 security forces officials, were killed in militant attacks and other kinds of violence in the southwestern province of Balochistan on the night between Sunday and Monday, the military and police said on Monday.
Balochistan, which borders Iran and Afghanistan and is home to major China-led projects such as a strategic port and a gold and copper mine, has been the site of a decades-long separatist insurgency, with ethnic Baloch militants saying they are fighting what they see as the unfair exploitation of the province’s mineral and gas wealth by the federation. The Pakistani state denies the allegations and says it is working to uplift the impoverished province through various development schemes.
The eruption of violence in the province on Sunday night poses a major challenge for the weak coalition government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, which is battling economic meltdown and political opposition, as well as a rise in militant violence across the country. Balochistan is also currently in the grips of civil rights protests by young ethnic Baloch who are calling for an end to what they describe as a pattern of enforced disappearances and human rights abuses by security forces, which deny the charge.
A senior police official said passengers were taken off vehicles on Sunday evening in Musa Khel, a district in the northeast of Balochistan, and at least 23 people were fatally shot dead after they were identified as hailing from the Punjab province. Militants also burnt at least 35 trucks, buses and other vehicles.
“Twenty-three people were killed after armed men took them off from vehicles and goods trucks near Rara Sham, an area in Musa Khel,” SSP Musa Khel, Ayoub Achakzai, told Arab News on Monday morning.
People look at a burnt vehicle that was torched by gunmen after they killed passengers at a highway in Musakhail, a district in Balochistan province in restive southwestern Pakistan, on August 26, 2024. (AP)
The army’s media wing said soldiers and other law enforcement “immediately responded and successfully thwarted the evil design of terrorists,” killing 21 militants during a clearance operation.
“However, during the conduct of operations, fourteen brave sons of soil including ten Security Forces soldiers and four personnel of law enforcement agencies, having fought gallantly, made the ultimate sacrifice and embraced shahadat [martyrdom],” the army said.
No one has claimed responsibility for the Musa Khel killings yet but in the past, separatists in Balochistan have often killed workers and others from the country’s eastern Punjab who they see as outsiders exploiting the province. Most such previous killings have been blamed on the outlawed Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) and other groups demanding independence from the central government in Islamabad.
In another attack, Kalat SSP Police, Dotain Khan Dashti, said ten people, five from security forces, were killed when unidentified gunmen stormed a station of the Balochistan Levies in the central district of Kalat.
“The firing by armed men has left one policeman, four [paramilitary] levies’ personnel, and five citizens dead,” he said, adding that gunmen fled the scene and continued fighting with police in the city and on the highway.
“We are fighting with armed men on the national highway and inside the city,” the police officer said of the attack that remains unclaimed.
Separately, Pakistan Railways suspended train services between Quetta and Sibi on Monday after a key railway bridge near the Dozan area of Bolan was blown up in the early hours of Monday.
A man (center) mourns the death of his father at a hospital in Quetta, Pakistan, on August 26, 2024. (AN photo)
“Security forces have cordoned off the area and Pakistan Railways’ team has reached the site to assess the damages,” a Railways spokesman said.
Police in Bolan, a mountainous area of Kachi district, said they had found six bullet-riddled bodies close to the destroyed bridge during the early hours of Monday. The circumstances of the killings were unclear.
“Six bullet-riddled bodies of civilians were found near Kolpur and shifted to Quetta for identification,” Kachi Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Dost Muhammad Bugti told Arab News.
“Quetta-Sibi highway is blocked for traffic after unknown terrorists destroyed a railway bridge during early hours of Monday and the debris of the bridge fell on the highway.”
ATTACK ON ARMY CAMP
On Sunday, the Baloch Liberation Army, the most prominent of several separatist groups operating in Balochistan, said it had attacked a security forces’ camp in Bela city in Balochistan’s Lasbela District. The camp is located around 515 kilometers from the provincial capital of Quetta.
The BLA also said it had “taken full control of all major highways across Balochistan, blocking them completely.”
A senior police officer in Bela confirmed the attack on the military camp.
“Security clearance operation is going on as we can still hear sounds of gunshots and explosions from the camp,” Bela Station House Officer, Attaullah Jamoot, told Arab News.
Video clips widely shared on social media platforms WhatsApp and X showed a long queue of vehicles lined up on various roads on the key Quetta-Karachi highway in the Kalat and Mastung districts of the province.
“The situation is not good in Khad Kocha,” Abdul Shakoor, a paramilitary Levies soldier, told Arab News about an area in Masung district, some 67 kilometers from Quetta. “There are reports that armed persons have blocked the highway, and they have blown up the Pakistan-Iran railway track near Khad Kocha.”
Shakoor said there was no confirmation as yet of any casualties.
The army did not comment on the attack on the Bela camp but said militants had attempted to conduct numerous “heinous activities” in Balochistan on the night of Aug. 25-26.
“These cowardly acts of terrorism were aimed at disrupting the peaceful environment and development of Balochistan by targeting mainly the innocent civilians, especially in Musa Khel, Kalat and Labela Districts. Resultantly, numerous innocent civilians embraced shahadat,” the army said.
State-run Radio Pakistan said “terrorists have carried out cowardly attacks at several places,” without specifying where the assaults took place.
“Security forces and law enforcement agencies responded effectively to these attacks, twelve terrorists have so far been killed and many others are injured,” Radio Pakistan added. “The operation will continue until the terrorists are eliminated.”
The latest attacks coincide with the 18th anniversary of the killing of Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, a prominent Baloch politician and tribal chief who was killed in a military operation on Aug. 26, 2006, sparking deadly protests and inflaming the insurgency in Balochistan.
The impoverished province has seen an uptick in violence in the last few weeks, with separatist groups intensifying attacks ahead of and during Independence Day celebrations earlier this month, in which at least four people were killed.
Last week, security forces said they had killed three BLA militants during an intelligence-based operation in Mastung.
