QUETTA: Pakistani security forces gunned down eight separatist rebels linked to attacks that killed 17 people earlier in the restive southwestern province of Baluchistan, officials said.
Provincial Home Secretary Akbar Durrani said six insurgents were killed during shootout with paramilitary troops in the Mach area of Bolan district, 70km southeast of provincial capital Quetta.
He said troops surrounded the rebels’ hideout and asked them to surrender but the insurgents opened fire.
The separatists were linked to an attack on Tuesday that killed 14 people, including three security personnel, after stopping vehicles at a fake check-point.
Meerak Baloch, a spokesman for the Baluch Liberation Army, had earlier claimed responsibility for the killings.
Two separatists were shot dead by para-military forces in the neighbouring Mastung district, Durrani added, where a bomb on Wednesday killed a woman and two children in a market thronged by people shopping for Eid Al Fitr.
Regional administration official Syed Waheed Shah confirmed the insurgent death toll.
The bodies of six insurgents were brought to Quetta, but so far nobody had claimed them, Durrani said.
The rebels have been fighting in Baluchistan since 2004 for political autonomy and a greater share of profits from the region’s oil, gas and mineral resources.
Baluchistan is also a flashpoint for surging sectarian violence between Pakistan’s majority Sunnis and Shias, who account for around a fifth of the country’s 180 million people.
On Friday gunmen opened fire on worshippers leaving a mosque on the outskirts of Quetta after Eid prayers. The attack outside the Sunni mosque came a day after a Taliban suicide bomber killed 38 people at a police funeral in the city. Violence has continued in the country since the new government took office in June. The US has reiterated a long-standing warning to its citizens to avoid all non-essential travel to Pakistan.
Agencies
