Gunmen killed 20 miners and wounded another seven in Pakistan’s southwest, a police official said yesterday, drawing condemnation from authorities as a search was launched for the attackers.
The attack in Balochistan Province came days ahead of a major security summit in the capital.
The gunmen stormed the accommodations at the coal mine in Duki District late on Thursday night, rounded up the men and opened fire, police official Hamayun Khan Nasir said.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The attackers also fired rockets and lobbed grenades at the coal mine, and damaged the machinery used for the mining before fleeing, Nasir said.
Most of the men attacked were from Pashtun-speaking areas of Balochistan. Three of the dead and four of the wounded were Afghan.
Local shop owners pulled their shutters down to observe a daylong strike against the killing.
Photo: AFP
No group claimed immediate responsibility for the attack, but the suspicion is likely to fall on the outlawed Baloch Liberation Army.
Authorities said that police and paramilitary forces were searching for the attackers.
The group committed multiple attacks in August that killed more than 50 people, while authorities responded by killing 21 insurgents in the province.
Those killed included 23 passengers, mostly from Punjab Province, who were fatally shot after being taken from buses, vehicles and trucks in Musakhail District in Baluchistan.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif expressed his deep sorrow over the killings and vowed to eliminate terrorism.
Sarfraz Bugti, the chief minister in Balochistan, said that “terrorists have once again targeted poor laborers.”
The attackers were cruel and had an agenda to destabilize Pakistan, he said.
“The killing of these innocent laborers would be avenged,” he said in a statement.
Pakistani Minister of the Interior Mohsin Naqvi also said that those who killed the laborers would not be able to escape from the grip of the law.
The province is home to several separatist groups who want independence. They accuse the federal government in Islamabad of unfairly exploiting oil and mineral-rich Balochistan.
BLOODSHED: North Koreans take extreme measures to avoid being taken prisoner and sometimes execute their own forces, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Saturday said that Russian and North Korean forces sustained heavy losses in fighting in Russia’s southern Kursk region. Ukrainian and Western assessments say that about 11,000 North Korean troops are deployed in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces occupy swathes of territory after staging a mass cross-border incursion in August last year. In his nightly video address, Zelenskiy quoted a report from Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi as saying that the battles had taken place near the village of Makhnovka, not far from the Ukrainian border. “In battles yesterday and today near just one village, Makhnovka,
HOLLYWOOD IN TURMOIL: Mandy Moore, Paris Hilton and Cary Elwes lost properties to the flames, while awards events planned for this week have been delayed Fires burning in and around Los Angeles have claimed the homes of numerous celebrities, including Billy Crystal, Mandy Moore and Paris Hilton, and led to sweeping disruptions of entertainment events, while at least five people have died. Three awards ceremonies planned for this weekend have been postponed. Next week’s Oscar nominations have been delayed, while tens of thousands of city residents had been displaced and were awaiting word on whether their homes survived the flames — some of them the city’s most famous denizens. More than 1,900 structures had been destroyed and the number was expected to increase. More than 130,000 people
Some things might go without saying, but just in case... Belgium’s food agency issued a public health warning as the festive season wrapped up on Tuesday: Do not eat your Christmas tree. The unusual message came after the city of Ghent, an environmentalist stronghold in the country’s East Flanders region, raised eyebrows by posting tips for recycling the conifers on the dinner table. Pointing with enthusiasm to examples from Scandinavia, the town Web site suggested needles could be stripped, blanched and dried — for use in making flavored butter, for instance. Asked what they thought of the idea, the reply
US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen on Monday met virtually with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng (何立峰) and raised concerns about “malicious cyber activity” carried out by Chinese state-sponsored actors, the US Department of the Treasury said in a statement. The department last month reported that an unspecified number of its computers had been compromised by Chinese hackers in what it called a “major incident” following a breach at contractor BeyondTrust, which provides cybersecurity services. US Congressional aides said no date had been set yet for a requested briefing on the breach, the latest in a serious of cyberattacks
RSS