ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif this week described Pakistan’s defense and strategic ties with China as “vital” for regional peace, state broadcaster Radio Pakistan reported, after militants launched a series of coordinated attacks in the country’s restive southwestern Balochistan province that killed over 50 people.
Separatist militants who demand independence from the state have also targeted Chinese interests and citizens in Balochistan in the past, where Beijing runs the strategic southern deep-water port of Gwadar in the province as well as gold and copper mines.
In the violence that began on Sunday evening, 23 passengers were taken off their vehicles in Musa Khel, a district in the northeast of Balochistan, and shot dead. In another attack, the Pakistan Army said it had killed 21 militants during a clearance operation in which 14 soldiers and police also died. Separately, 10 people, including five security forces personnel, were killed when militants stormed a paramilitary force station in Kalat, while militants also blew up a railway bridge in Bolan in Balochistan’s Kachhi district. Six as yet unidentified bullet-riddled bodies were also found near the bridge, with the circumstances of the killings unclear.
General Li Qiaoming, the ground force commander of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, met PM Sharif on Monday after discussing regional security, military training and bilateral defense cooperation with Pakistan Army Chief General Asim Munir the same day.
“Prime Minister Mohammad Shehbaz Sharif says defense and strategic ties between Pakistan and China are vital for peace and stability in the region,” state broadcaster Radio Pakistan said in a report on Monday. “He said the deep-rooted ties between the two nations enjoy broad public, political, and institutional support in Pakistan, making them indispensable for the progress and development of both countries.”
Sharif expressed satisfaction over the deepening military-to-military exchanges between the two countries, saying they form the foundation of the bilateral relationship between Pakistan and China. The Pakistani premier described Pakistan and China as “all-weather strategic cooperative partners” and “trusted friends.”
However, the state broadcaster did not mention the separatist attacks in Balochistan in its report.
General Qiaoming recognized the role of Pakistan’s armed forces in promoting regional peace and stability and combating “terrorism,” Radio Pakistan said. He reiterated PLA’s commitment to further expanding its cooperation with Pakistan to enhance capacity building of the two armed forces.
Pakistan’s Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi blamed separatists and the Pakistani Taliban for the attacks, saying that militants operating from safe havens in neighboring Afghanistan were launching attacks in Pakistan, a charge denied by Kabul.
“We know who planned this and who is behind them. They thought carefully and conducted the attacks in a single day,” Naqvi told reporters on Monday. “The entire leadership has decided that we will respond to them with full force.”
Gas-and-mineral-rich Balochistan, which borders both Iran and Afghanistan, is Pakistan’s largest province by size but the least populated and remains largely underdeveloped, with high levels of poverty.
China has recently publicly raised with Pakistan the issue of the security of its workers and interests, especially since a March suicide attack in which five Chinese workers and their local driver were killed in northwest Pakistan.