Coordinated attacks in Pakistan kill 10 security personnel and dozens of insurgents

QUETTA, Pakistan (AP) — Assailants armed with guns and grenades carried out nearly a dozen coordinated attacks across southern Pakistan early Saturday, targeting a high-security prison, police stations and paramilitary installations and killing at least 10 security personnel, authorities said. At least 37 insurgents were also killed in the gunbattles.

Though Baloch separatists and the Pakistani Taliban frequently target security forces in Balochistan and elsewhere in the country, coordinated attacks on this scale are rare.

Pakistan’s Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi in a statement said 10 security officers were killed. He also praised the forces for killing 37 insurgents after coming under fire at multiple locations across the province.

He claimed that the attacks were carried out by the Indian-backed “ Fitna al-Hindustan, ” a phrase the government uses for the outlawed Baloch Liberation Army, or BLA, and other separatist groups

Shahid Rind, a spokesman for the Balochistan government, said most of the attacks were foiled. They came a day after the military said security forces this week raided two militant hideouts in the country’s southwest, killing 41 insurgents in separate gunbattles.

According to state police and government officials, at least 37 assailants have been killed by police responding to about a dozen attacks on Saturday. Earlier Saturday, authorities said that insurgents destroyed rail tracks, prompting Pakistan Railways to suspend train services from Balochistan to other parts of the country.

The attacks began almost simultaneously across the province, provincial Health Minister Bakht Muhammad Kakar said. He said two police officers were killed in a grenade attack on a police vehicle in Quetta, the provincial capital. The government declared an emergency at all hospitals.

Dozens of insurgents also attacked a prison in Mastung district, freeing more than 30 inmates, police said. In other attacks, militants attempted to storm the provincial headquarters of paramilitary forces in Nushki district, but the attack was repelled, police said.

Insurgents hurled grenades at the office of a government administrator in Dalbandin district, but a swift response by security forces forced them to flee, according to local authorities. Attacks on security posts in Balincha, Tump and Kharan districts were thwarted, while in Pasni and Gwadar, insurgents attempted to abduct passengers traveling on buses along highways, police said.

Kakar also blamed the violence on the BLA, which is banned in Pakistan and designated a terrorist organization by the United States. It has been behind numerous attacks in recent years, and Pakistan says the group enjoys the backing from India, a charge New Delhi denies. Pakistan has repeatedly said that Baloch separatists, the Pakistani Taliban and other militants are using Afghan soil to launch attacks inside Pakistan. Kabul denies the claim.

Baloch separatist groups and the Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, have intensified attacks in Pakistan in recent months. The TTP is a separate group but allied with Afghanistan’s Taliban, who returned to power in August 2021.

Balochistan has long been the site of an insurgency by separatist groups seeking independence from Pakistan’s central government in Islamabad.

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Ahmed reported from Islamabad.