QUETTA: At least three security personnel were killed and 15 others sustained injuries when a vehicle-borne suicide bomber hit a paramilitary Pakistan Coast Guards check-post in the southwestern Balochistan province, a police official said on Saturday.
The suicide bomber rammed an explosive-laden truck into the Panwan check-post, located some 10 kilometers from Jiwani in Balochistan’s Gwadar port city, a key component of the $60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
The outlawed Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), an armed separatist group behind several high-profile attacks in the region, claimed the latest assault, saying its Majeed Brigade unit had targeted the post.
Atta-ur-Rehman Khan Tareen, a senior superintendent of police (SSP) in Gwadar, told Arab News that 18 soldiers of Pakistan Army and Pakistan Coast Guards were deployed at the check-post, when the attack occurred on Friday night.
“Two soldiers of Pakistan Army and one soldier of Pakistan Coast Guards were killed in the attack,” Tareen told Arab News. “Fifteen soldiers were injured in the attack. Among them, one is in a critical condition and shifted to the hospital.”
The coastal city of Gwadar is strategically significant for Pakistan due to its deep-sea port on the Arabian Sea, which Islamabad considers vital to regional trade and energy routes linking China, Central Asia, and the Middle East.
Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest but least developed province that borders Iran and Afghanistan, has been the site of a long-running separatist insurgency that has intensified in recent years, complicating Pakistan’s efforts to market the Gwadar port city and the mineral-rich province as key investment destinations.
“Police and law enforcement agencies (LEAs) immediately reached the scene after the blast and secured the area,” Tareen said, adding that investigations were underway to trace facilitators of the attack.
Friday’s attack was the second suicide assault by the BLA in Balochistan in less than two months. In May, dozens of people, including security personnel, were killed in a similar vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (VBIED) attack on a shuttle train in Quetta.
The separatists accuse the central government of stealing the region’s resources to fund development elsewhere in the country. The Pakistani government denies the allegations and says it is working for the uplift of local communities in Balochistan.
