Pak: Baloch gunmen massacre 37 people in 2 separate attacks

Karachi: Heavily-armed Baloch gunmen killed at least 37 people in separate attacks in Pakistan’s restive Balochistan province on Monday, as insurgent attacks spiked in the region bordering Afghanistan.

According to the government and security officials, on the intervening night between Sunday and

Monday, militants belonging to outlawed separatist groups carried out four attacks leading into Monday in which 37 people were killed.

The Inter-Services Public Relations, the media wing of the Pakistan Army, in a statement, said that 21 terrorists were also killed in cleanup operations launched after the attacks.

Earlier, Baloch gunmen killed at least 37 people in two separate attacks in Balochistan province on Monday.

In the first incident, at least 23 people from Pakistan’s Punjab province were killed in a targeted

attack in Balochistan’s Musakhel district after gunmen offloaded them from buses and checked their identities.

According to Musakhail Assistant Commissioner Najeeb Kakar, around 10 heavily-armed men blocked the inter-provincial highway in the Rarasham area of the district and offloaded passengers from several buses.

“The dead are reportedly from Punjab,” he said. Apart from killings some of the vehicles were also set on fire.

Musakhel is approximately 450 kilometres northeast of Quetta, the capital of Balochistan.

The rebels regularly target people from the Punjab province by alleging that Punjabis are dominant in the armed forces which have been fighting the militants in the province.

Senior Superintendent of Police Ayub Khoso said: “The passengers were told to get down from buses and shot dead after being identified from their national ID cards,” Khoso said.

“Most of those killed belonged to southern Punjab and some are from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa suggesting they were killed because of their ethnic background,” he added.

In another incident, officials said that 11 people were killed in Kalat also in Balochistan, including five civilians and six security personnel, authorities said.

Kalat is 150 km to the south of Quetta and is predominantly inhabited by ethnic Baloch tribes.