By Saleem Ahmed and Mushtaq Ali
QUETTA, Feb 5 (Reuters) – Pakistan’s military said on Thursday it had concluded a week-long operation against separatists in Balochistan who stormed more than a dozen locations, taking hostages, setting off explosives and waging gun battles with security forces.
Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest and poorest province, was brought to a virtual standstill last Saturday when the separatist Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) launched a coordinated sunrise attack.
Its fighters entered schools, banks, markets and security installations across the region in one of their largest ever operations.
Images from the provincial capital Quetta and other areas showed blown-out buildings, some razed to the ground, and blackened bricks and concrete strewn across the streets.
“The situation is now under control as there is no fighting in the city but people are very scared and concerned about their safety,” Quetta resident Nasrullah Khan, 51, said.
SEARCH FOR MILITANTS ONGOING
The military said it “successfully concluded” its Radd Al-Fitna 1 (countering chaos) operation, thwarted separatist attacks, broke up sleeper cells and seized weapons.
However, the BLA said in a statement that it considered its Operation “Herof”, or Black Storm, to be ongoing and dismissed the military’s suggestion that their operation had ended as “propaganda”.
The military said 216 militants had been killed in targeted offensives across the troubled southwestern province in the operation which began on January 29, two days before the separatist attacks.
It said 22 security personnel and 36 civilians were killed in the fighting with the BLA. An official from the provincial Home Ministry gave a higher toll, saying 45 security officials and 40 civilians had been killed.
The BLA, which has urged people of the province to support the movement, said in its statement that it had killed 310 soldiers during its operation, without providing evidence.
Security officials and witnesses said the insurgents had seized government buildings and police stations in several locations, and took over the desert town of Nushki for three days before they were pushed out. Officials said helicopters and drones were used to eject separatist fighters from the town.
“A combing operation is continuing in some areas including some parts of Quetta,” the provincial chief minister’s aide, Shahid Rind, told a press conference.
He said a major highway linking Quetta to the province’s biggest copper mines was being repaired after it was damaged by blasts.
PAKISTAN BLAMES INDIA FOR ATTACKS, DELHI REJECTS CHARGE
Mineral-rich Balochistan borders Iran and Afghanistan and is home to Beijing’s investment in the Gwadar deepwater port and other projects.
It has grappled with a decades-long insurgency led by ethnic Baloch separatists seeking greater autonomy and a larger share of its natural resources.
Pakistan has blamed India for the attacks, without giving evidence for charges that could escalate tensions between the nuclear-powered neighbours, who fought their worst armed conflict in decades in May.
“India has once again intensified terrorism in Pakistan through its proxies,” Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said on Thursday.
India’s foreign ministry has rejected the charges and said Islamabad should focus on tackling the “long-standing demands of its people in the region”. The ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sharif’s statement.
(Reporting by Saleem Ahmed in Quetta and Mushtaq Ali in Peshawar; Additional reporting by Mubasher Bukhari in Lahore and Tariq Maqbool in Muzaffarabad; Writing by Saad Sayeed; Editing by YP Rajesh, Andrew Heavens and Gareth Jones)
Comments