Amid a rise in shooting crimes, at least 20 miners were killed and seven injured in an attack by armed men on a small private coal mine in the southwestern Pakistani province of Balochistan on Friday, police said.
“A group of armed men attacked the Junaid Coal company mines in the Duki area in the wee hours using heavy weapons,” said Humayun Khan, the police station house officer for the town, located east of the city of Quetta. They fired rockets and grenades at the mines as well, he added.
“We have received 20 bodies and six injured so far at the district hospital,” said Johar Khan Shadizai, a doctor in Duki. As per officials, most of the victims were from Pashtun-speaking areas of Balochistan. Three of the dead and four of the wounded were Afghan.
Previously on Wednesday, suspected militants riding on a motorcycle opened fire on a vehicle carrying police officers Thursday in a former stronghold of the Pakistani Taliban, killing two of them and wounding two others, police said. The attack happened in Tank, a city in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan, local police official Sher Afzal said.
No group has claimed responsibility, but suspicion is likely to fall on the Pakistani Taliban, known as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP, who often target security forces. The TTP are outlawed in Pakistan. They are separate from but a close ally of the Afghan Taliban who control neighboring Afghanistan.
In another case of shooting in Pakistan, three people were killed in clashes in the northwestern town of Jamrud between police and supporters of a banned right group Pashtun Protection Movement or PTM, which authorities say supports TTP.
The government has also barred PTM from holding rallies in the northwest, allegedly because the demonstrations are against the interests of Pakistan. PTM denies backing the Pakistani Taliban, and tension was growing Thursday after the group vowed to resist the ban on their rallies.