QUETTA: Three of ten tourists who were abducted last week in southwestern Pakistan by separatist militants have been released, a local security official said on Tuesday.
The tourists were kidnapped last Wednesday night at a famous tourist spot called Shaban, 35 kilometers from the provincial capital of Quetta in Balochistan province. The separatist militant outfit, the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), claimed responsibility for the kidnappings.
Levies local law enforcement official Ajmal Khan said on Tuesday three people, including a Pakistan customs official, had been released, without offering details on how the release happened.
“Levies has condoned off the area and a search operation is underway,” Nasibullah Kakar Director-General Levies told Arab News.
Six of the ten tourists abducted belong to the same family.
“Soon we will recover the rest of the seven abductees,” home minister Zia Langove said.
The BLA is the most prominent of a number of separatist groups operating against the Pakistani state in Balochistan. BLA’s stated aim is complete independence for Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest province by territory but the smallest in terms of population given its arid mountainous terrain.
The province has seen a decades-long insurgency against what separatists call the unfair exploitation of resources in the mineral-rich region.
A spokesperson for the BLA told Arab News in an emailed statement the three tourists had been released because they were found to be “innocent,” without specifying what they were found to be innocent with regards to.
“BLA had detained 10 individuals after an intelligence tip-off,” the BLA said. “The remaining suspects are undergoing judicial investigation and proceedings.”
Balochistan borders Afghanistan to the north, Iran to the west and has a long coastline on the Arabian Sea. It has Pakistan’s largest natural gas field and is believed to have many more undiscovered reserves.
It is also rich in precious metals including gold, the production of which has grown over recent years.
Most of the separatist groups operate independently, but some recent reports in local media have pointed to increasing cooperation between them.
Pakistani security forces have been their main focus, but in recent years they have also targeted Chinese interests, given Beijing’s increasing economic footprint in the region.
