File Photo. Banaras Khan—AFP
At least 13 members of BLF killed after attack on construction workers in Turbat.
Paramilitary forces have killed at least 13 members of an insurgent group who shot dead 20 construction workers in Balochistan province, officials said Monday.
Gunmen killed 20 laborers at point blank range on Friday evening in Balochistan, after identifying them as migrant workers from elsewhere in the country, an attack claimed by the Baloch Liberation Front (BLF) separatist group.
Immediately following the killings, security forces launched a search operation in the barren mountainous area and have so far killed 13 militants, with the fighting ongoing.
“Security forces have killed at least 13 militants who killed the laborers,” a spokesman for the paramilitary forces told AFP. The spokesman said one BLF commander was among those killed, and another of the group’s leaders was captured alive.
Provincial home secretary Akbar Hussain Durrani confirmed the militant death toll.
The group, which claimed Friday’s raid on the labor camp in Turbat district of Balochistan, regularly attacks migrant workers and government installations. The BLF gained greater international recognition after kidnapping American UNHCR worker John Solecki from Quetta on February 2009. Solecki was later released on “humanitarian grounds.”