Armed attackers kill at least 21 in Pakistan coal mines

Dozens of attackers armed with guns, rockets and hand grenades have attacked a cluster of private coal mines in the southwest. Pakistan on Friday shot dead some miners in their sleep, killing at least 21 others after some lined them up, police said.

The worst attack in Balochistan province, which borders Afghanistan and Iran, was carried out by about 40 gunmen days before Pakistan hosted the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit.

“The armed terrorists stayed in the mine area for about an hour and a half,” said regional police officer Asif Shafi. “They fired rockets and grenades at mines and miners' quarters.”

The attackers also set fire to machinery at the site, senior district government official Kalimullah Khakar said. Seven others were injured, he said.

Coal Co. in the Dugi area did not immediately claim responsibility for the attack on Junaid's small mines. The dead included four Afghan nationals and four others were injured.

Afghanistan's foreign ministry strongly condemned the attack in a statement, and designated its Quetta embassy to facilitate the transfer of the bodies.

Businesses and shops were closed in Dugi as hundreds of people gathered with the bodies of those who died in the protest demanding the arrest of the attackers, police said.

“We have been receiving threats from militants for some time, but there is no information about an attack,” said mine owner Khairullah Nazar.

The attackers set fire to 10 mines and the equipment and machinery inside, he added.

A decades-long insurgency in Pakistan's poorest province of Balochistan has led to frequent attacks by separatist militant groups against the government, the military and Chinese interests in the region. Many attacks have targeted migrant workers, including some from Afghanistan, working in small, privately run mines.

The attacks have increased in recent months, provincial governor Zafar Khan Mandokel said, calling the killing of miners an inhumane act.

“On the one hand you talk about your freedom and your rights, on the other hand you kill innocent workers,” he told a news conference, referring to separatist militant groups. “We strongly condemn it and we will take all measures against it.

“The government is committed to rooting out all forms of terrorism,” Prime Minister Shebaz Sharif said in a statement.

The provincial government has ordered an inquiry and “a case has been registered against the unknown assailants under the Terrorism Act,” said a government official speaking on condition of anonymity.

Apart from separatists, the region is also home to Islamist militants, who have been on the rise since 2022 after canceling a ceasefire with the government. Two Chinese nationals working at a power plant were killed this week in a blast in the southern city of Karachi, claimed by the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), one of several rebel groups fighting the government.

The BLA was behind Balochistan's most widespread violence in August, which targeted police stations, railway lines and highways and killed more than 70 people. Last month, gunmen entered workers' quarters in the eastern province of Punjab and killed seven people.

On Friday, two militants suspected of being involved in the 2021 attack on dam project workers, in which 13 people, including nine Chinese nationals, were killed in a shootout between police and attackers.

With Agence France-Presse