Gunmen stop vehicles, kill 23 in Pakistan

Gunmen shot dead 23 passengers after identifying them and removing them from buses, cars and trucks in one of the deadliest attacks in southwest Pakistan, police and authorities said Monday.

The killings took place on Thursday night in Musakhail, a district in Balochistan province, senior police official Ayub Achakzai said. The attackers set fire to at least ten vehicles before fleeing.

In a separate attack early Monday, gunmen killed at least nine people, including four police officers and five bystanders, in Balochistan's Qalat district, authorities said. Shootings were also reported in other parts of the province.

Militants blew up a railway track in Bolan district of the province, disrupting rail traffic. Gunmen also attacked a police station in Mastung district of Balochistan, but no casualties were reported.

President Asif Ali Zardari and Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi each called the Musakhail attack “barbaric” and vowed that the perpetrators would not escape justice. Naqvi later also condemned the Qalat killings.

The Musakhail attack came hours after the separatist Balochistan Liberation Army (BAL) group urged people to stay off the roads as it launched attacks on security forces in several areas of the province. But there was no immediate claim of responsibility for the overnight killings.

Separatists often ask people for their identity cards and then abduct or kill those who come from Punjab or other provinces. In May, gunmen shot dead seven barbers in Gwadar, a port city in Balochistan. In April, separatists killed nine people after abducting them from a bus on a highway in Balochistan. The attackers also killed two people and wounded six others in another car that they forced to stop. The BLA claimed responsibility for the attacks at the time.

Syed Muhammad Ali, a security analyst based in Islamabad, said the latest killings of non-Baloch people are an attempt by separatists to economically harm the province.

Ali told The Associated Press that most of these attacks are carried out with the aim of economically weakening Balochistan, noting that “weakening Balochistan means weakening Pakistan.”

He said the insurgent attacks could hamper ongoing development works in the province.

Separatists in Balochistan have often killed workers and others from the eastern Punjab region as part of a campaign to force them out of the province, which has been wracked by a low-level insurgency for years.

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Most of the killings of this type have been blamed on the outlawed group and other groups demanding independence from the central government in Islamabad. Islamist militants are also present in the province.

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