Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Armed insurgents in Pakistan’s south-western Balochistan province killed at least 23 people in a spate of attacks on Sunday night and Monday morning, in the deadliest surge of separatist violence in the country in decades.
The Baloch Liberation Army, an armed separatist group in the mineral-rich province, claimed responsibility for the attacks, according to a statement released by the organisation on Monday.
Militants from the group stopped buses on a highway in Balochistan overnight on Sunday, demanding identification cards from passengers and shooting those from the heartland province of Punjab, which is the home of most of Pakistan’s population of 240mn, according to officials. Some of the buses were also set on fire, videos from the scene showed.
“The pursuit of terrorists who martyred innocent people by taking them off buses in the dark of night and checking their identity cards is continuing,” Sarfraz Bugti, chief minister of Balochistan, wrote on X.
The state-run Radio Pakistan reported on Monday that security services had killed at least 12 militants and injured “many others”.
Militant groups have waged a decades-long insurgency for secession in Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest province by size but its last populous, which borders Iran and Afghanistan. In January, Islamabad and Tehran traded air strikes against militant groups in their respective border regions, raising fears of instigating broader hostilities in the area.
The province is also the site of important foreign investment projects, including the Reko Diq copper mine and the China-backed port of Gwadar.
The BLA, which has been labelled a terrorist group by the UK, US, China and Pakistan, has also targeted Chinese citizens in Pakistan, including a suicide bombing in 2022 that killed three Chinese language teachers at the University of Karachi’s Confucius Institute.
Terrorist violence has surged in Pakistan since the Taliban’s takeover in 2021 of Afghanistan. Pakistani officials allege that the Islamic militant group has allowed groups such as the BLA and Pakistani Taliban to find safe haven in the country.
More than 1,500 people were killed in terrorist attacks in Pakistan last year, triple the number before the withdrawal of US and Nato troops, according to the South Asia Terrorism Portal.
The deteriorating security situation in the province has previously drawn condemnations from Beijing, Pakistan’s largest bilateral lender, over concerns that separatist violence could derail the $60bn China-Pakistan Economic Corridor infrastructure initiative.
A Chinese official visiting Islamabad in June publicly complained that the deteriorating security situation was the “main hazard” to the CPEC’s success, warning that the violence was “shaking the confidence of Chinese investors”.
