QUETTA, Pakistan — Gunmen killed at least 37 people in separate attacks in south-western Pakistan on Monday, officials said, while security forces killed 21 insurgents, marking one of the deadliest days of violence in volatile Baluchistan province, with reports of other shootings and destruction in the area.
Twenty-three people were shot dead overnight after being identified and taken from buses, vehicles and trucks in Musakhail, a district in Baluchistan, senior police official Ayub Achakzai said.
The attackers burned at least 10 vehicles before fleeing.
In a separate attack, gunmen killed at least nine people, including four police officers and five passers-by, in Baluchistan’s Qalat district, authorities said.
The bodies of six people were found in Bolan, where insurgents also blew up a railway track, attacked a police station in Mastung, and attacked and burned vehicles in Gwadar, all districts in Baluchistan. No casualties were reported in those attacks.
The military said 14 security forces were “martyred” while responding to the attacks. Those appeared to be included in the overall death toll.
“Sanitization operations are being conducted and the instigators, perpetrators, facilitators and abettors of these heinous and cowardly acts, targeting innocent civilians, will be brought to justice,” the military said in a statement.
President Asif Ali Zardari and Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi in separate statements called the attack in Musakhail “barbaric” and vowed that those who were behind it would not escape justice.
Later, Naqvi also condemned the killings in Qalat.
The attack in Musakhail came hours after the outlawed Baluch Liberation Army separatist group warned people to stay away from highways, as they launched attacks on security forces in various parts of the province. But there there was no immediate claim of responsibility for the overnight killings.
Separatists often ask people for their ID cards, and then abduct or kill those who come from Punjab or other provinces.
In May, gunmen fatally shot seven barbers in Gwadar, a port city in Baluchistan.
In April, separatists killed nine people after abducting them from a bus on a highway in Baluchistan, and the attackers also killed two people and wounded six in another car they forced to stop. BLA claimed responsibility for those attacks at the time.
Syed Muhammad Ali, an Islamabad-based security analyst, said the latest killings of non-Baluch people is an attempt by separatists to harm the province economically.
Ali told The Associated Press that most such attacks are carried out with the aim to economically weaken Baluchistan, noting that “the weakening of Baluchistan means the weakening of Pakistan.”
He said insurgent attacks could hamper development work being done in the province.
Separatists in Baluchistan have often killed workers and others from the country’s eastern Punjab region as part of a campaign to force them to leave the province, which for years has experienced a low-level insurgency.
Most such previous killings have been blamed on the outlawed group and others demanding independence from the central government in Islamabad. Islamic militants also have a presence in the province.
