QUETTA: Unidentified gunmen on Tuesday abducted five workers, who hailed from Pakistan’s Punjab province, from an agricultural field in the southwestern Balochistan province, a Balochistan government official said.

Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest but least developed province that borders Iran and Afghanistan, has been the site of a long-running separatist insurgency and has witnessed kidnappings of and attacks targeting foreign nationals, infrastructure projects, security forces, police and non-native Pakistanis.

The latest incident of kidnapping of drivers and their helpers occurred in Masezai, a remote area of Balochistan’s Killa Abdullah district near the Pakistan-Afghan border, after they arrived at an agricultural site along with two trucks to load a consignment of watermelons.

“A group of unidentified armed men riding on motorbikes stopped them from loading and abducted them along with their trucks,” a Balochistan government official, who requested anonymity, told Arab News.

“The drivers were identified as Muhammad Adnan, Muhammad Shahzad, Muhammad Azan, Inam Raza and Baqir Hussain who were all residents of Punjab province,” he said.

“The whereabouts of the abducted drivers are still unknown but police have been searching the area for the safe recovery of the abductees.”

The incident came a day after Pakistani security forces launched joint operations against militants in Killa Abdullah and Pishin districts, killing six militants and arresting five others.

No group has claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of the drivers, but ethnic Baloch separatist groups have often targeted non-native commuters and laborers whom they accuse of spying for the state.

Last month, unidentified militants attacked a road construction site in Balochistan’s Pishin district, killing five laborers who hailed from Punjab. In a similar attack in July, police found bullet-riddled bodies of six laborers, who hailed from Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces, in Balochistan’s Kech district.