QUETTA: Police arrested at least 60 people and deployed tear gas in Pakistan’s poorest province during a strike on Monday, as protesters demanded accountability over a suicide attack claimed by Daesh.
Businesses were shut and demonstrators took to the streets across more than a dozen cities in Balochistan in response to a September 2 bombing at a political rally that killed 15 people.
In provincial capital Quetta, police arrested protesters blocking a road and fired tear gas to disperse them.
“The government has already warned the protesters that although they have their democratic right to protest peaceful, they have no right to force people to be off the roads or disrupt the vehicle traffic and force the people to close their businesses,” senior police superintendent Muhammad Baloch told AFP.
Balochistan, a turbulent province on the border with Iran and Afghanistan, is regularly the scene of violence, often carried out by militants from the regional branch of the Daesh, Islamic State-Khorasan, as well as by IS-Pakistan or Baloch separatists.
Ahead of the strike, the Balochistan National Party (BNP) urged the public to unify across political, tribal and class lines to demand those behind the attack to be exposed.
“Isn’t the state responsible for this? Wasn’t it the duty of the state to protect these innocent people?” said BNP chief Akhtar Mengal.
The Daesh group claimed responsibility for the bombing in a stadium parking lot in Quetta, where hundreds of BNP supporters had gathered for a rally.
Last year was the deadliest in a decade in Pakistan, with a spike in violence along the western border with Afghanistan.
Pakistan’s largest and most resource-rich province, sparsely populated Balochistan is also its poorest, and regularly ranks among the lowest on human development indicator scorecards.
Baloch separatists have been fighting a decades-long insurgency against the Pakistan military with the aim of ending discrimination against the Baloch people on their land, which has been met with a severe counter-terrorism crackdown.
