Pakistan’s Balochistan, home to China-led projects, hit by militant attacks, killing 39

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.

Militants have fought a decades-long ethnic insurgency to demand the secession of the resource-rich southwestern province, which is home to a number of major China-led projects, including a strategic port and a gold and copper mine.

The largest of the attacks confirmed by authorities targeted vehicles from buses to goods trucks on a major highway, killing at least 23 people, officials said, with 10 vehicles set ablaze.

A rail line between Pakistan and Iran and a railway bridge linking Quetta, the provincial capital, to the rest of the country were also hit with explosives in militant attacks, railways official Muhammad Kashif said.

Rail traffic with Quetta was suspended, he added.

Around the same time, militants also targeted police and security stations in the sprawling province, officials said, one of which killed at least 10 people.

Militant group the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) took responsibility in a statement emailed to journalists that claimed many more attacks, including one on a major paramilitary base, though Pakistani authorities have yet to confirm these.

On Sunday night, armed men blocked a highway in Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest province, marched passengers off the vehicles, and shot them after checking their identity cards, said Ayub Achakzai, a senior superintendent of police.

“The armed men also not only killed passengers but also killed the drivers of trucks carrying coal,” said Hameed Zahir, the deputy commissioner of the area, adding that at least 10 trucks had been