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Gunmen shot dead 20 miners and wounded over half a dozen in Pakistan's restive Balochistan province on Friday, just days ahead of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in the country.
Nearly 40 gunmen stormed the living quarters of workers at a coal mine in Duki district at around 12.30am local time and fired on them, police said.
The carnage lasted about 30 minutes before the attackers "escaped into the night", Asim Shafi, police chief in Duki, said. "They had rocket launchers and hand grenades with them.”
Three of the dead workers and four of the wounded were Afghans. The rest were mostly Pashtun from Balochistan, police said.
No group claimed immediate responsibility for the Duki attack, but the suspicion was likely to fall on the outlawed Balochistan Liberation Army, which has a long history of targeting civilians and security forces in the region.
The attack drew strong condemnation from Pakistan's interior minister Mohsin Naqvi and Balochistan’s chief minister Sarfraz Bugti, who said the "terrorists have once again targeted poor labourers".
The chief minister said the attackers were cruel and had an agenda to destabilise Pakistan. "The killing of the innocent labourers would be avenged," he said in a statement.
Friday’s was the latest in a spate of terrorist attacks in recent months that has raised concerns about Pakistan's ability to provide security for foreign leaders participating in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Islamabad on 15 and 16 October.
Balochistan is home to several separatist groups that accuse the federal government of unfairly exploiting the province’s natural resources like oil and minerals, and routinely target natural resource extraction projects.
The Balochistan Liberation Army launched multiple attacks in August that killed over 50 people, prompting a security crackdown that left 21 insurgents dead in the province. Those killed included 23 passengers mostly from eastern Punjab province who were fatally shot after being taken from vehicles in Musakhail district.
This week, the proscribed group claimed responsibility for an attack outside the Karachi airport that killed two Chinese citizens.
Pakistan's interior ministry has deployed troops to secure the capital and asked the four provincial governments to take additional measures to enhance security as the separatist groups and Pakistani Taliban could launch attacks at public places and government installations during the upcoming security summit.
