QUETTA: Unidentified gunmen this week kidnapped nine laborers from two separate construction sites in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province, police and government officials said on Sunday, as security forces conduct search operations to recover them. 

The first incident occurred on Saturday night in the mountainous district of Khuzdar, where armed men abducted workers from a water channel construction site.

“Six laborers working for a private construction company were kidnapped after armed men stormed a construction site of a water channel in Mola, a mountainous town in Khuzdar,” Senior Superintendent of Police Khuzdar Shahzad Umar Abbas told Arab News.

He said the laborers were from Sindh and Balochistan, adding that police teams have started search operations to recover the kidnapped laborers. 

The second incident also took place during Saturday night when gunmen abducted three laborers from Dola river located around 12 kilometers from Barkhan city in Balochistan.

Abdullah Khosa, deputy commissioner of Barkhan, said armed men came from the nearby mountains at around 9:30 p.m. and kidnapped the laborers while they were inside their camp. 

“Security forces have been in pursuit of the kidnappers and search operations are going on for the safe recovery of the laborers,” Khosa told Arab News. 

While no group has claimed responsibility for the kidnapping, the separatist Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) has in the past claimed abducting and killing laborers. 

The BLA has targeted laborers mostly from Pakistan’s eastern Punjab province in the recent past. Ethnic Baloch militant groups such as the BLA accuse the central government and Punjab of monopolizing profits from Balochistan’s natural resources. The state denies these allegations. 

Balochistan, which shares porous borders with Afghanistan and Iran, has been the scene of a low-lying insurgency for decades. Militants have frequently targeted government officials, security forces, laborers and Chinese personnel in the area. 

The BLA launched a series of coordinated attacks in Balochistan on Jan. 30-31 which claimed over 50 lives while the army said 216 militants were killed.