KARACHI, Pakistan (Reuters) – An attack on Pakistani troops in Gwadar district killed 14 on Friday, the military said, in the latest violence in a region troubled by a decades-old insurgency and Islamist militants.
“Two vehicles of security forces moving from Pasni to Ormara in Gwadar District were ambushed by the terrorists,” the Inter Services Public Relations agency (ISPR), the army’s public relations wing, said in a statement without identifying the assailants.
Ethnic Balochs have for years been fighting the government in Balochistan, a mineral-rich region that borders Afghanistan and Iran.
Islamist militants, who aim to overthrow the Pakistani government and install their own brand of strict Islamic law in the predominantly Muslim country of 220 million people, have also been active in Balochistan.
“Sanitization operation is being carried out in the area and perpetrators of this heinous act will be hunted down & brought to justice,” the army statement added, without mentioning the group behind the attack.
(Reporting by Mushtaq Ali in Peshawar, Saleem Shahid in Quetta; Writing by Ariba Shahid in Karachi; Editing by Alison Williams and Andrew Cawthorne)
