Army says hunting militants behind deadly attacks in Pakistan's Balochistan

Residents stand beside a charred vehicle near a collapsed railway bridge the morning after a blast by separatist militants at Kolpur in Bolan district, Balochistan province on August 27, 2024. (AFP)

• Intelligence-based operations conducted in Kech, Panjgur and Zhob districts
• Five militants were killed and three injured in operations, army’s media wing says

ISLAMABAD: Five militants were killed and three injured during multiple intelligence-based operations (IBOs) by security forces in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan, the military’s media wing said on Friday, as the army hunts for insurgents behind a string of coordinated attacks in the province on Aug. 26 in which 50 people were killed. 
Ethnic Baloch insurgents on Sunday evening hit several civil and military targets in a coordinated string of attacks in Balochistan, killing at least 19 security officials. The army said it retaliated, killing 21 militants.
“The security forces are conducting extensive intelligence-based operations to hunt down the perpetrators of these heinous acts,” the army said on Friday. “On night 29/30 August, in three separate IBOs in District Kech, Panjgur and Zhob, five terrorists were sent to hell by the security forces, while three terrorists got injured during the intense fire exchange.”
In the attacks that began on Sunday night, militants took control of a highway and shot dead 23 people, mostly laborers from neighboring Punjab province. They also attacked a hotel and blew up a railway bridge which connects Balochistan to the rest of Pakistan. Security forces have been battling sectarian, ethnic and separatist violence for decades in impoverished Balochistan, but the coordinated attacks that took place in several districts throughout the province were one of the worst in the region’s history.
Many of Sunday’s attacks were claimed by the Balochistan Liberation Army, the most prominent of separatist groups waging a war of independence against the state, which it accuses of the unfair exploitation of resources in the mineral-rich region. The government denies this.
Balochistan, which borders Afghanistan and Iran, is Pakistan’s poorest province, despite an abundance of untapped natural resources, and lags behind the rest of the country in education, employment and economic development.
The province is also home to major China-led projects such as a deep-water port and a gold and copper mine.
Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif has said the Aug. 26 attacks were aimed at hurting the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), an over $65 billion scheme to develop road, rail and port infrastructures in Pakistan that is part of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
Beijing has condemned the attacks.