Militants in restive southwestern Pakistan shot and killed at least 20 workers early yesterday at a dam construction site, the deadliest recent attack targeting civilians in a region facing a low-level insurgency, authorities said.
The violence targeted the Gobdan area, in the district of Turbat, in Balochistan Province — a region where nationalist and separatist Baluch groups have foughtoagainst the Islamabad-based government for years. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.
A large group of militants attacked a labor camp near the dam construction site, overpowering eight security guards on the site and shooting dead sleeping laborers before fleeing, district commissioner officer Pasand Khan Buledi said. Buledi gave the casualty figure and said the attack wounded three people. Buledi said 16 of the dead were from Pakistan’s Punjab Province and four were from Sindh Province. He said the eight guards, all from Balochistan, were unharmed in the attack.
Previous separatist attacks saw gunmen kill people from Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province, over what they describe as its exploitation of their region. Those from Balochistan are often unharmed in such attacks.
Pakistani Interior and Tribal Affairs and Prisons and Provincial Disaster Management Authority Minister Sarfaraz Bugti told private satellite news channel Geo TV that Pakistan’s paramilitary Frontier Corps was searching in the nearby mountains for the attackers.
“We will chase them down and bring them to justice,” Bugti said. “We need help in this war against terrorists. Alone, we cannot fight.”
Balochistan government spokesman Jan Mohammad Buledi said the government would offer the families of the deceased 1 million Pakistani rupees (US$9,820) each.
Baluchistan is the scene of a low-intensity insurgency by separatists who want a more substantial share of revenue from gas and mineral resources and complete autonomy from Islamabad. Muslim militants also operate in the area.
Baluch activists said Pakistani forces detained their people for years without bringing them to court, sometimes killing them and dumping their bodies in the desert.
Three years ago, the Voice for Baluch Missing Persons organization handed the UN a list of 12,000 people they said had gone missing during the conflict.
The disappearances in Balochistan Province began swelling in the mid-2000s, when former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf’s administration cracked down on insurgents there.
The government has repeatedly denied the allegations, with some officials saying many of the missing are criminals in hiding, have joined militant groups or have been abducted by others.
In September 2012, 10 laborers and five tribesmen in a labor camp were gunned down in the province’s Khuzdar District.
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