ISLAMABAD: A Baloch woman recently arrested over an alleged bombing attempt addressed a government-organized press conference on Wednesday and said that she had been “misguided by terrorists” and recruited to carry out a suicide attack.

It was unclear under what circumstances Adeela Baloch addressed the press conference and whether she spoke freely or under pressure from state authorities in Balochistan, a resource-rich but impoverished province where separatist militants have been fighting a decades-long insurgency to win secession of the region. The Pakistani government and military deny they are exploiting Balochistan and have long maintained that neighbors such as India, Afghanistan and Iran foment trouble in the remote province and support and fund the insurgency there. 

Army and government officials have also referred to a Baloch ethnic rights movement that has held protests across the province in recent months as a “terrorist proxy” and rejected their allegations of a pattern of enforced disappearances and other human rights abuses by security forces. The movement is being led by young people, many of them educated women. Independent experts have criticized the state for ignoring what they say are the genuine grievances of the youth of Balochistan, and warned that a heavy-handed approach toward the protests could drive more educated people toward militancy. 

“The perception nowadays that Baloch women willingly carry out suicide attacks is wrong. I am an eyewitness to this, I have seen it myself, these people use blackmail,” Baloch told reporters at a press conference in Quetta where she was sat alongside Balochistan government spokesperson Shahid Rind.

Baloch, who had worked at a government hospital in the district of Turbat , was reported missing by relatives on Sept. 19. 

She said her job had involved helping people and saving lives but she was “misguided and led astray” by militants who convinced her to become a suicide bomber. 

“I didn’t even consider that while I would lose my life in the attack, many others could also lose their lives because of me,” she added. “I realized my mistake when I went to the mountains [where militants have taken sanctuary]. There, I saw other people who had been misled, with guns in their hands.”

Adeela thanked the provincial Balochistan government for “rescuing” and saving her from militants. She did not name the group that had allegedly enlisted her or describe the target of the planned attack.

Arab News could not independently confirm her identity or verify her claims.

Last month, the outlawed separatist Balochistan Liberation Army, said a woman was among a group of its fighters who had killed more than 50 people in a series of coordinated attacks in the restive province.

In April 2022, a highly educated female suicide bomber who was a mother from a well-to-do family killed three Chinese teachers in Karachi along with their local driver. Shari Hayat Baloch, 30, was a science teacher who had a masters degree in Zoology and was planning to enroll in a second masters degree at the time she detonated explosives in her rucksack as a minivan carrying three Chinese teachers drove by, police said at the time. While studying at university in the Balochistan capital Quetta, she had been a member of the Baloch Students Organization (BSO).

In 2019, a female suicide bomber in northwestern Pakistan killed at least eight people and wounded 26 more in an attack outside a local civilian hospital. In 2017, Noreen Leghari, a would-be woman suicide bomber, was taken into custody by the Pakistan army over accusations she was planning an attack on a church in the eastern city of Lahore. She was a second-year medical student. 

In 2012, a woman suicide bomber targeted Pakistani religious-political leader Qazi Hussain Ahmad but he escaped unhurt in the attack.