File Photo. Asif Hassan—AFP
Frontier Corps troops raid Lashkar-e-Jhangvi compound in Huramzai village.
Paramilitary forces on Monday killed five members of a Sunni militant outfit linked to the Islamic State group and notorious for sectarian attacks, officials said.
Frontier Corps troops stormed a compound in Balochistan and killed them in a gunfight, said paramilitary spokesman Khan Wasay. The militants belonged to Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, which works both with Islamic State and Al Qaeda in Pakistan, he said.
Provincial Home Secretary Akbar Harifal confirmed the details of the clash in the village of Huramzai in Pashin district.
Jhangvi has claimed responsibility for some of the most brazen attacks targeting minority Shia Muslims in Pakistan’s recent history, and had also turned its guns on government forces in recent years.
Separately, security forces arrested 10 Baloch separatists after a gunfight in Khuzdar district, provincial home minister Sarfraz Bugti told AFP.
Mineral-rich Balochistan province has been plagued for decades by a separatist insurgency and sectarian killings. In August a suicide bombing at a Quetta hospital claimed by the Islamic State group and the Jamaat-ul-Ahrar wing of the Pakistani Taliban killed 73 people, including many of the city’s lawyer community. They had gone there to mourn the fatal shooting of a colleague.