The violence began with blasts that ripped through a military camp in Pakistan’s Baluchistan Province late Sunday night, killing at least one soldier. Around the same time, armed men stormed into at least four police stations in the province, spraying bullets at officers and setting police vehicles on fire, local officials said.
By daybreak, militants had destroyed a bridge, bringing the major railway that runs across it to a halt. Then early Monday morning, the violence hit its apex when gunmen held up traffic on a major highway, shooting and killing nearly two dozen people.
Over a 24-hour period, the new wave of violence carried out by an armed separatist group has seized Baluchistan Province in southwestern Pakistan and left at least 38 people dead, worsening the country’s already deteriorating security situation.
The spate of coordinated attacks in Baluchistan began on Sunday, as the group, the Baluch Liberation Army, or B.L.A., announced that it was starting a new operation across the province. The B.L.A. is one of several insurgent groups that has demanded the province’s independence from the central government in Islamabad.
The deadliest single attack in the campaign so far unfolded in Musakhel, a district in Baluchistan, officials said, when armed men stopped traffic on a highway and demanded that passengers on buses and trucks show them their identity cards, officials said.
The gunmen forced some of the passengers out of the vehicles, and then shot and killed them, officials said. Nearly all of the victims were from Punjab Province, officials said, and the gunmen set at least 10 buses and trucks ablaze before fleeing the area.
Pakistani officials immediately condemned the attacks and instructed the authorities to carry out an investigation into them.
“No form of terrorism is acceptable in the country,” Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said in a statement. “Our fight against terrorism will continue until the complete elimination of the scourge.”
Some security experts and analysts say the coordinated attacks point to an intelligence failure by the country’s powerful military, which has long been the ultimate authority in the country. The Pakistani authorities have said in recent years that they had quelled the decades-old insurgency, but the recent attacks were a worrying sign that the B.L.A. has become more capable than ever before, analysts say.
“This is the peak of the critical phase of the insurgency,” said Muhammad Amir Rana, the director of the Pak Institute for Peace Studies, which monitors extremist violence and is based in Islamabad. He added that the recent violence demonstrated a higher degree of coordination and planning by the B.L.A. than in previous attacks. Pakistan military officials say that security forces responded to each of the attacks and killed at least 21 insurgents.
“Security forces and law enforcement agencies of Pakistan in step with the nation, remain determined to thwart attempts at sabotaging peace, stability and progress of Baluchistan,” according to a statement from the military’s media wing.
Terrorism across Pakistan has surged since United States troops withdrew from neighboring Afghanistan in 2021 and the Taliban seized power.
Since the Taliban takeover, some militant groups have found safe haven on Afghan soil while a Taliban-led crackdown on the Islamic State affiliate in the region has pushed its fighters into Pakistan.
During the Taliban’s first year back in power, the number of terrorist attacks across Pakistan rose by around 50 percent compared with the year before, according to the Pak Institute for Peace Studies. Over the past two years, the number of violent attacks has continued to rise.
The violence has fueled tension between the Pakistani authorities and Taliban officials, who have denied offering support or protection to militant groups including Baluch separatists. It has also stoked concerns that the region could become a haven for international terrorist groups and that a wider conflict could break out in Pakistan’s border areas.
So far, the Pakistani authorities have been unable to quell the violence. American military support in the form of arms, intelligence, financing and more that once flowed freely into the country has dwindled since the American withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Many militants are armed with advanced U.S.-made weapons and equipment that they seized after the U.S.-backed Afghan government collapsed, according to Pakistani authorities.
The Pakistani police have said they feel underequipped to handle the new wave of violence. Residents in areas affected say they are increasingly frustrated by the government’s response. Some have accused the country’s powerful military of being more focused on meddling in Pakistani politics than providing security.
Baluchistan, an arid province that stretches between the borders with Afghanistan and Iran and the Arabian Sea, has been the scene of much of the violence. The province, which is roughly the size of Germany, is resource rich but home to only about 12 million people.
The region is also the site of a Chinese-operated deepwater port in Gwadar, a key piece of China’s Belt and Road Initiative in Pakistan, which has been a vital source of foreign investment and also a target of militant anger.
Since Pakistan’s founding in 1947, the province has endured several insurgencies driven at least in part by exploitation of its resources, and in recent years, militants have targeted Chinese development projects in the region. In response, those groups and residents in Baluchistan have faced heavy state repression and human rights abuses, human rights groups say.
The B.L.A. has been among the most persistent insurgent groups. Founded in the early 2000s, the group appeared to have been significantly weakened by 2020 after years of counterinsurgency operations and rifts among separatist groups. But in recent years, it has roared back — a feat highlighted by the operation that began on Sunday.
“Our fight is against the occupying Pakistani military,” the Baluch Liberation Army said in a statement before the attacks. “If the police interfere, we will attack them as well.”
The announcement coincided with the 18th anniversary of the death of Nawab Akbar Bugti, an influential tribal leader in Baluchistan who took up arms against the federal government in 2005 and was killed by the Pakistani military a year later. His death injected new energy into to the insurgency in the region, analysts say.
The spate of attacks rattled residents of the province, many of whom were already on edge after the uptick in violence over the past three years.
“Last night’s attacks and the previous ones have shown that the militants are highly organized,” said Ishaq Hayyat, a resident of Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan Province. “The attacks have really increased public fears — we’re concerned about our safety.”
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