The TOI correspondent from Islamabad: Two police personnel and four militants were killed in an attack on a police check post in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province on Friday.
The attack came two days after the separatist Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) claimed the killing of seven passengers, who hailed from Pakistan’s Punjab province, on a highway in the restive province.
In the latest incident, police said that armed men stormed a police check post in Shaban area, some 35 km from the provincial capital Quetta, early on Friday morning, “killing two policemen and injuring two others”, local police station in-charge Munir Khan said.“The police force retaliated and killed four attackers,” Khan said, adding, “Search and clearance operations continued in the area as some terrorists fled to the nearby mountains.”
Pakistan has been struggling to quell separatist attacks in Balochistan, which shares a porous border with Iran and Afghanistan.
According to official figures, around 40 attacks against police in Balochistan in 2024 killed at least 25 police officers and injured 61 others. Last month, dozens of fighters of the separatist outfit wrested control of a small town in Khuzdar from paramilitary forces. Pakistani authorities regained the town after hours of effort.
The separatists accuse Pakistan’s federal govt and military authorities of exploiting the natural resources of mineral-rich Balochistan for development elsewhere in the country, while neglecting the local population. The province has been the site of an insurgency for the last two decades, with separatists frequently attacking police, security forces, and civilians they see as “outsiders” in the region. The BLA also targets Chinese interests in the restive province.