QUETTA: Dozens of unidentified gunmen on Saturday attacked a road construction site in Balochistan’s Duki district, killing a security guard and abducting 12 workers, police 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.

In the latest incident, around 40-50 unidentified gunmen attacked a road construction site of privately owned Sultan Mehmood Company in Duki’s Palri area, where they set fire to four vehicles, according to Duki Superintendent of Police (SP) Mansoor Buzdar.

“One private security guard who was deployed for the security of the camp was killed and another sustained injuries,” Buzdar told Arab News, adding the attack occurred early Saturday morning when the workers were resting in their camp.

“The attackers abducted 12 laborers who belonged to Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces after checking their NICs (national identity cards).”

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack and kidnapping of the laborers but ethnic Baloch separatist groups have often targeted non-native Pakistanis and private construction companies.

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.

Saturday’s incident follows the kidnapping of five workers, who hailed from Pakistan’s Punjab province, from an agricultural field in Balochistan’s Killa Abdullah district near the Pakistan-Afghan border this month, according to a government official.

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.

Separately on Saturday, Pakistan’s military said that security forces had killed 16 militants in Balochistan’s Quetta and Nushki districts, taking the militant death toll to 33 in the region since Sept. 21.

Islamabad has also frequently accused India of supporting and Afghanistan of providing safe havens to separatist militants who carry out attacks in the mineral-rich province. New Delhi and Kabul have consistently denied this.