QUETTA, Pakistan — Pakistan’s military said Saturday that suicide and gun attacks by militants across the restive southwestern province of Balochistan killed 33 people, including civilians, while security forces responding to the violence killed 92 assailants.
Analysts described it as the deadliest day for militants in decades.
During the attacks, Baloch insurgents targeted civilians, a high-security prison, police stations and paramilitary installations. Eighteen civilians, 15 security personnel and 92 insurgents were killed, the military said.
Though Baloch separatists and the Pakistani Taliban frequently target security forces in Balochistan and elsewhere in the country, coordinated attacks on this scale are rare. Authorities said at least 133 militants have been killed across Balochistan over the last 48 hours, including 92 on Saturday.
The military and Pakistan’s Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi said the attackers had the backing of India.
There was no immediate response from New Delhi, which has denied such allegations previously.
The outlawed Baloch Liberation Army, or BLA, claimed responsibility for the suicide and gun attacks, during which banks were robbed and a police station and dozens of vehicles torched. The BLA released videos showing female fighters taking part in the attacks, apparently part of propaganda efforts to highlight the role of women among the militants.
Shahid Rind, a spokesman for the Balochistan government, said most of the attacks were foiled. They came a day after the military said security forces this week raided two militant hideouts in the country’s southwest, killing 41 insurgents in separate gun battles.
The provincial chief minister, Sarfraz Bugti, wrote on X that security forces were chasing the insurgents. He said at least 700 of the fighters were killed by security forces in the last year. Earlier Saturday, authorities said that militants destroyed rail tracks, prompting Pakistan Railways to suspend train service from Balochistan to other parts of the country.
The attacks began almost simultaneously across the province, provincial Health Minister Bakht Muhammad Kakar said. He said two police officers were killed in a grenade attack on a police vehicle in Quetta, the provincial capital. The government declared an emergency at all hospitals.
Dozens of insurgents also attacked a prison in Mastung district, freeing more than 30 inmates, police said. In other attacks, militants attempted to storm the provincial headquarters of paramilitary forces in Nushki district, but the attack was repelled, police said.
Insurgents hurled grenades at the office of a government administrator in Dalbandin district, but a swift response by security forces forced them to flee, according to local authorities. Attacks on security posts in Balincha, Tump and Kharan districts were thwarted, while in Pasni and Gwadar, insurgents attempted to abduct passengers traveling on buses along highways, police said.
The BLA is banned in Pakistan and designated a terrorist organization by the United States. It has been behind numerous attacks in recent years, and Pakistan says the group enjoys the backing from India, a charge New Delhi denies. Pakistan has repeatedly said that Baloch separatists, the Pakistani Taliban and other militants are using Afghan soil to launch attacks inside Pakistan. Afghanistan’s Taliban government denies the claim.
Abdullah Khan, managing director of the Islamabad-based Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies, told the Associated Press that the “terrorists linked to BLA or other groups had never before been killed in such a large number in a single day” in Balochistan.
Baloch separatist groups and the Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, have intensified attacks in Pakistan in recent months. The TTP is a separate group but allied with Afghanistan’s Taliban, who returned to power in August 2021.
Balochistan has long been the site of an insurgency by separatist groups seeking independence from Pakistan’s central government in Islamabad.
Sattar and Ahmed write for the Associated Press and reported from Quetta and Islamabad, respectively. AP writers Babar Dogar in Lahore, Pakistan; and Ishtiaq Mahsud in Dera Ismail Khan, Pakistan; contributed to this report.
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