ISLAMABAD: Lt. Gen. Asif Ghafoor has been appointed Commander 12 Corps, Quetta, the Pakistan military said in a statement late on Wednesday night, replacing the last top commander in the southwestern Balochistan province who died in a helicopter crash earlier this week.

A Pakistani military helicopter carrying General Sarfaraz Ali and five others crashed on a mountain during a flood relief operation and all on board were killed, the military and police said on Tuesday.

The army aviation helicopter, which was helping with flood relief work in Balochistan province, lost contact with air traffic control on Monday.

“He [Ghafoor] is replacing Lt. Gen. Sarfraz Ali ... who embraced shahadat (martyrdom) in a helicopter crash due to bad weather during flood relief operations in Lasbela, Balochistan, on 1 August 2022,” the Pakistan army said in a statement.

Lt Gen Ghafoor has previously served as the head of the army’s media wing, ISPR, a role in which he is widely believed to have tightened the military’s grip over Pakistan’s media landscape and imposed de facto censorship rules. The military denies it suppresses the press.

The XII Corps, also known as Quetta Corps, is stationed in Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province. The strategically key formation has been on the frontlines of the war against militants and separatists, and was originally raised after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, spending the first few years of its history guarding against Soviet expansionism.

Ethnic Baloch militants have for decades waged an insurgency against the Pakistani government and army in Balochistan, complaining that its rich gas and mineral resource are unfairly exploited to the benefit of other parts of the country. The state denies this. The Pakistan army has launched several operations against separatist insurgents in its 75-year-long history. But the insurgency in Balochistan, a sparsely populated, mountainous, desert region bordering Afghanistan and Iran, has sometimes waned and sometimes intensified over the years.

The province is also home to deep-water Gawadar port, which neighboring China has been developing as part of a multi-billion dollar China-Pakistan Economic Corridor to link road and sea routes with Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative. Separatists oppose the projects and try to attack them.