Pakistan’s military has launched intelligence-based operations in country’s southwestern Balochistan province. This is in response to the widespread attacks by insurgents that killed over 50 people this week, the country’s army said on Friday.
Ethnic Baloch insurgents earlier this week assaulted several civil and military targets in a coordinated string of attacks. The army said it retaliated and killed 21 militants.
On Monday, separatist militants attacked police stations, railway lines, and vehicles on highways in Pakistan’s province of Balochistan, killing at least 39 people, officials said on Monday, in the most widespread assault by ethnic insurgents in years.
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Militants have fought a decades-long ethnic insurgency to demand the secession of the resource-rich southwestern province, home to a number of major China-led projects including a strategic port and a gold and copper mine.
Balochistan, which borders both Iran and Afghanistan, is Pakistan’s largest province by size, but the least populated and it remains largely underdeveloped, with high levels of poverty.