QUETTA: Unidentified gunmen killed 20 miners and injured another seven in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province in the wee hours of Friday, police said, in the latest attack to hit the volatile region.
The attackers stormed a residential compound of miners in the Duki district at around midnight on Thursday and fled after killing laborers and damaging machinery at around 3am on Friday, according to Hamayoun Khan, the local police station in-charge, and survivors.
The deceased laborers, who hailed from various districts of Balochistan and the neighboring Afghanistan, came under attack while they were asleep in their accommodation outside a private coal mining site.
“Twenty coal mine laborers, residents of Zhob, Killa Saifullah, Loralai, Pishin [districts in Balochistan] and Afghanistan were killed in the attack and seven were wounded who were shifted to District Headquarter Hospital Duki,” Khan told Arab News.
Pakistan’s Balochistan province, which shares porous borders with Afghanistan and Iran, has been the scene of a low-lying insurgency for decades. Ethnic Baloch militants often target police, security forces, foreigners and workers from other provinces for what they call as the exploitation of the mineral-rich region’s resources. The Pakistani state denies the allegations.
No group claimed responsibility for Friday’s attack, which led to a protest by the Coal Mine Laborers Association in Duki. The laborers were protesting with bodies of the slain colleagues outside a security forces camp in the district.
Coal miners and laborers along with the coffins of victims who died in an overnight attack take part in a protest against these killings in Duki district of Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province on October 11, 2024. (AFP)
“We heard intense sound of explosions and gunfire for three hours in the night. I was sleeping close to the mountains and my fellow mine workers were at their rooms outside the mining site,” Paind Khan Laown, a coal miner who lost four of his friends in the attack, told Arab News.
“We need nothing from the government but security for poor workers.”
Authorities said police and paramilitary forces were searching for the attackers.
In August, the outlawed Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), the most prominent of separatist groups, carried out multiple attacks in Balochistan that killed more than 50 people, while authorities responded by killing 21 insurgents in the province. Those killed included 23 passengers, mostly from the eastern Punjab province, who were fatally shot after being taken from buses, vehicles and trucks in the Musakhail district.
Injured men receive treatment at a hospital in Quetta on October 11, 2024, following Thursday attack by gunmen in Balochistan province. (AP)
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif expressed his deep sorrow over Friday’s killings and vowed to eliminate militancy, while Balochistan Chief Minister Sarfraz Bugti said “terrorists have once again targeted poor laborers.”
“The killing of these innocent laborers would be avenged,” Bugti said in a statement.
While militants have frequently targeted miners and other workers from the Punjab province in the past, Friday’s attack was the first large-scale attack on coal mine laborers hailing from the Pashtun-dominated areas of Balochistan and neighboring Afghanistan.
“Three critically injured persons were referred to Loralai for better medical care,” Dr. Johar Khan, the Duki district health officer, told Arab News.
