ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has called upon authorities to identify and hand an “exemplary punishment” to gunmen who recently killed a senior government administrator in southwestern Pakistan, state broadcaster Radio Pakistan reported on Tuesday. 

Gunmen ambushed a vehicle carrying Panjgur Deputy Commissioner Zakir Baloch in the southwestern Mastung district on Monday, police said, killing him and wounding two other people before fleeing. 

No one claimed responsibility for the attack. However, the troubled southwestern Balochistan province has been the scene of frequent militant attacks amid a long-running insurgency by groups seeking independence for the mineral- and gas-rich province bordering Iran and Afghanistan.

“Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has expressed profound grief over martyrdom of Deputy Commissioner Panjgur Zakir Baloch in an attack in Mastung,” Radio Pakistan said in a report. “He said the persons involved in the attack will be identified and given exemplary punishment.”

Sharif also prayed for the early recovery of those injured in the attack and directed authorities to provide “all possible medical treatment” to them, state media said. 

Balochistan is Pakistan’s largest province by land yet its most scarcely populated and backward one by almost all economic indicators. Ethnic Baloch separatist outfits accuse the state and its Punjab province of exploiting the natural resources of the province to their advantage, an allegation Pakistan’s military and civil governments frequently deny. 

The restive province has also been the scene of frequent attacks targeting laborers and tourists from Pakistan’s Punjab province, whom militant outfits accuse of spying for state agencies.

Gunmen attacked and killed seven laborers in Balochistan’s port city of Gwadar in May this year. Subsequent investigations proved all seven laborers hailed from Punjab. In April, gunmen kidnapped nine laborers in southwestern Nushki district after determining they were from Punjab and shot them dead.