QUETTA: Separatist militant outfit Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) this week kidnapped 10 tourists in southwestern Pakistan who hailed from Punjab, an official of a local law enforcement force confirmed on Thursday.
The incident took place on Wednesday night at a famous tourist point named Shaban, 35 kilometers from the provincial capital of Quetta in southwestern Balochistan province, Levies official Ajmal Khan confirmed.
Khan said around 50-60 armed men kidnapped 14 people from a rest house in Shaban. After checking their identification cards, four were released while 10 were detained, he revealed.
“Ten people, including one Pakistan Customs personnel, belonging to Punjab were taken to an unknown place,” Khan, who is the head muharrar or person responsible for documentation at the Levies station in Harnai district where the incident took place, told Arab News.
Khan said the BLA was responsible for the kidnapping, adding that the militant group had hoisted its flag atop the rest house. He said it is difficult for authorities to carry out a search operation as the area where the incident took place was a far-flung one.
“Here BLA has camps and we have warned tourists to not come to this place,” the Levies official said.
In a separate statement, BLA claimed responsibility for kidnapping the tourists.
“In an intelligence-based operation in Quetta’s Shaban area, Baloch Liberation Army’s Fatah Squad took into custody 10 suspicious persons,” the group stated.
It said the detained persons were being questioned, adding that a detailed statement would be issued to the media “soon.”
Pakistan’s restive Balochistan province, which shares porous borders with Afghanistan and Iran, has been wracked by an insurgency launched by ethnic Baloch militants since decades.
These Baloch nationalists have long accused the Pakistani government and Punjab province of monopolizing profits from Balochistan’s abundant natural resources, saying it has led to political marginalization and economic exploitation.
However, Pakistani administrations have denied these allegations, citing several development initiatives launched in the province to improve local living conditions.
In April and May, three separate attacks in Balochistan targeted laborers from Pakistan’s Punjab province. A group of unidentified gunmen attacked and killed seven laborers in a residential quarter in Gwadar, a coastal town in Pakistan, on May 9.
In April, the BLA claimed responsibility for the killings of nine Punjab residents traveling to Iran from Quetta. In another incident that took place in April, two workers from Punjab were targeted in Balochistan.
