QUETTA: Unidentified gunmen killed four police officers and four Punjab-based laborers in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan in separate attacks on Saturday, police and government officials confirmed amid the province’s worsening security situation.
The first attack took place in Balochistan’s Mangochar town, located some 40 kilometers from Kalat district, at 2:30pm on Saturday when gunmen shot dead four laborers who hailed from Pakistan’s eastern Punjab province, Mangochar Assistant Commissioner Ali Gul Imrani said. The laborers hailed from Punjab’s Sadiqabad district.
Attacks on laborers from other parts of the country have increased in Balochistan, with militants accusing them of profiting from the region.
In a separate attack, four cops were killed the same day after unidentified men on a motorcycle ambushed a police mobile in Nushki district’s Ghareebabad area, Nushki Police Station House Officer Zafar Sumalani told Arab News.
“A police mobile came under attack on Saturday when armed men targeted them with intense gunfire,” Sumalani said. “Four policemen, including three constables and one head constable, were killed.”
Sumalani said the policemen belonged to Nushki district, adding that their bodies had been shifted to the District Headquarters Hospital in the area.
“Police have beefed up security in Nushki and its surrounding areas to hunt down the attackers involved in killing policemen,” he said.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif condemned the attack on the police officers, expressing grief and sorrow over the incident.
“The prime minister directed authorities to launch an immediate investigation into the incident and identify those responsible,” the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) said in a statement.
So far, no group has claimed responsibility for both attacks but suspicion is likely to fall on the outlawed separatist militant outfit Baloch Liberation Army (BLA).
The BLA has carried out attacks against Punjab-based laborers and law enforcers in the restive southwestern province, as the group demands a greater share of Balochistan’s natural resources from the province.
Balochistan, which shares porous borders with Iran and Afghanistan, has experienced a low-scale insurgency by Baloch separatist groups for decades, who accuse Islamabad of denying them a share in the natural resources of the province.
Pakistan’s central government and the military deny the allegations, pointing to several projects they say are aimed at bringing progress to the province.
The attacks take place amid the worsening security situation in the province. BLA fighters last Tuesday stormed a train in the rugged Bolan region, seizing hundreds of passengers before the military launched a rescue operation.
The siege that lasted for two days ended after a military operation that killed 33 militants. The attack, which also claimed the lives of more than 30 Pakistanis, was one of the deadliest train assaults in the country’s history.
The attacks also take place in Balochistan amid rising political instability in the province, as a leading Baloch ethnic rights group announced on Saturday its top leader Mahrang Baloch had been arrested along with several of her colleagues in Balochistan after police raided their protest camp at dawn in the provincial capital of Quetta.
The Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC) said its leader’s arrest came amid a province-wide wheel-jam strike that followed an alleged police attack on a protest in Quetta that killed three people on Friday evening.
BYC said its leader and other supporters began a sit-in with the bodies of the deceased when authorities intervened and detained them.
