File Photo. Asif Hassan—AFP
At least six Frontier Corps personnel killed, 14 others wounded in assault claimed by Baloch Liberation Army
At least six paramilitary troops were killed on Friday when their convoy came under attack by unidentified gunmen in Balochistan province, officials said.
The incident took place in the far-flung mountainous Kech district where soldiers from the paramilitary Frontier Corps (FC) were on a routine patrol.
“Six FC men embraced martyrdom while 14 others were wounded in the gun attack,” said Zahoor Buledi, provincial information minister.
A senior official from the FC confirmed the attack and told AFP that a search operation has been launched in the area.
A spokesman for the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), a separatist militant group, claimed responsibility for the attack.
Mineral-rich Balochistan province borders Afghanistan and Iran and is home to ethnic, Islamist and political insurgencies. China is investing in the area under a $54-billion project known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), upgrading infrastructure, power and transport links between its far-western Xinjiang region and Pakistan’s Gwadar port.
Thousands of paramilitary troops are deployed in troubled areas of the country to carry out security checks and to help police in maintaining law and order.
Violence in Pakistan has dropped significantly since the country’s deadliest-ever militant attack, an assault on a school in Peshawar in 2014 that killed more than 150 people, most of them children.