QUETTA—
Seven paramilitary soldiers were martyred in an attack by gunmen on a checkpoint in Mekhtar area in Loralai District of southwestern Baluchistan province.
“Seven soldiers embraced shahadat (martyrdom) when a post of the FC (Frontier Corps) came under attack in the early hours of Monday,” Manzoor Ahmed, a spokesman for the paramilitary force, told a foreign news agency.
He added that one soldier was injured but remained stable.
Nirak Baluch, a spokesman for the Baluch Liberation Army (BLA) claimed responsibility for the attack in a telephone call to the news agency.
Baluchistan, Pakistan’s largest but least developed and most sparsely populated province, has been wracked for decades by a separatist insurgency that was revived in 2004.
The separatists believe that locals do not receive a fair share of the province’s energy and mineral wealth, while rights groups accuse the government of extra-judicial detentions and killings of activists.
Pakistani rights group Defence for Human Rights says as many as 2,000 people have disappeared from across the country, many from Baluchistan.
The province is also blighted by Islamist militants, banditry and sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shiites.
Pakistan’s Supreme Court and high courts have also been investigating cases of missing people and issuing warnings to the government to recover those who have disappeared.
