QUETTA: Five people, including a policeman, were killed in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province after a group of armed militants ambushed private security camp of a local tribal leader in Khuzdar district, a senior police official said on Wednesday.

Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest but least developed province that borders Iran and Afghanistan, has been the site of decades-long separatist insurgency and has witnessed an uptick in targeted attacks on members of the country’s armed forces, state-backed political and tribal leaders and non-native Pakistanis.

In the latest attack, a group of armed men ambushed the private security camp of prominent tribal leader Mir Shafique-ur-Rehman Mengal in Arenji, a remote town some 180 kilometers (111 miles) from Khuzdar district of Balochistan, according to Khuzdar Superintendent of Police (SP) Dostain Domki.

“Four local tribesmen guarding the residence and a policeman were killed in the attack,” SP Domki told Arab News.

“The attackers took the policeman with them and killed him around 1.5 kilometers away from the camp.”

The official said it took authorities hours to reach the attack site because of the difficult terrain and they were now shifting the bodies to a hospital in Khuzdar’s Wadh city.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack but suspicion is likely to fall on ethnic Baloch separatists, who have previously targeted Mengal and his family.

In July, Mengal had narrowly escaped an attack after a group of armed men, including suicide bombers, stormed his residence in Khuzdar, according to police. The attack, claimed by BLA, had killed at least 17 people.

Mengal’s younger brother, Atta-ur-Rehman Mengal, was killed inside his residence in Arenji in June last year, following a heavy exchange of fire with BLA fighters.