QUETTA: Separatist attacks on police stations, railway lines and highways in Pakistan's restive province of Balochistan, coupled with retaliatory operations by security forces, killed more than 60 people, officials said on Monday.
The most widespread assault by insurgents in years forms part of a decades-long effort to win secession of the resource-rich southwestern province, home to major projects such as a strategic port and a gold and copper mine.
"These attacks are a well thought out plan to create anarchy in Pakistan," Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi said in a statement, adding that security forces had killed 12 militants in operations after the attacks on Sunday and Monday.
Pakistan's military said 14 soldiers and police, and 21 militants, were killed in fighting after the largest of the attacks, which targeted vehicles from buses to goods trucks on a major highway. It was not immediately clear whether that included the 12 militants the interior ministry confirmed dead. Local officials said at least 23 passengers were killed in the attack, with 35 vehicles set ablaze.
Rail traffic with Quetta was suspended following blasts on a rail bridge linking the provincial capital to the rest of Pakistan, as well as on a rail link to neighbouring Iran, railways official Muhammad Kashif said. Police said they had found six as yet unidentified bodies near the site of the attack on the railway bridge.
Officials said militants also targeted police and security stations in Balochistan, which is Pakistan's largest province by area, killing at least 10 people in one attack.
Militant group the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) took responsibility in a statement to journalists that claimed many more attacks, including one on a major paramilitary base, though Pakistani authorities have yet to confirm these.
The BLA is the biggest of several insurgent groups that have battled the central government for decades, saying it unfairly exploits Balochistan's gas and mineral resources. It seeks the expulsion of China and independence for the province.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif vowed that security forces would retaliate and bring those responsible to justice. On Sunday night, armed men blocked a highway in Balochistan, marched passengers off vehicles, and shot them after checking their identity cards, a senior superintendent of police, Ayub Achakzai said. — Reuters
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