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QUETTA: At least 18 soldiers were killed and five, including two civilians, were injured after separatist militants launched overnight attacks in a southwestern town, an official confirmed on Saturday after a van carrying the soldiers was targeted in one of the attacks.

The attacks began late Friday when militants attacked three different spots in Mangochar town located in Balochistan’s Kalat district around 103 kilometers from the provincial capital of Quetta, Kalat Deputy Commissioner Bilal Shabbir confirmed.

The attacks took place in Pidrang, Khazeni and Mangochar Bazaar areas of the town, the deputy commissioner shared, where militants started conducting snap checking of passenger vehicles passing through the town.

In the first incident, Shabbir said a van carrying 17 soldiers from Panjgur to the provincial capital of Quetta came under attack near the mountainous area of Khazeni, where armed men battled with paramilitary Levies and Frontier Corps’ personnel.

He said one soldier of the Frontier Corps (FC) force was separately killed in clashes with the militants.

“The bodies of the slain soldiers were shifted to Quetta,” Shabbir said. “We don’t know how many attackers were killed because they took the bodies of their fighters to the mountains in the dark.”

He said three FC personnel were also injured in the attack, adding that militants also set a private bank on fire at Mangochar Bazaar.

Banned separatist outfit Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) claimed responsibility for the attacks in a statement. The group said its fighters have captured a Pakistani security forces camp in Mangochar, which Arab News could not independently verify.

Meanwhile, Assistant Commissioner Mangochar Ali Gul Hassan said two civilians were separately injured when a Quetta-Karachi passenger bus was hit with bullets at the bazaar.

He said security forces had taken control of the area and opened the Karachi-Quetta highway and its surrounding roads for traffic.

“Security forces have completed the clearance operation in the area during the early hours of Saturday and the Quetta-Karachi highway (N-25) is opened for traffic,” Hassan told Arab News.

Arab News contacted Pakistan military’s media wing, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) for confirmation but did not receive a response till the filing of this report.

Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest province by landmass and rich in mineral resources, has long faced a low-level insurgency led by separatist groups like the BLA, who accuse Islamabad of exploiting the province’s natural resources, such as gold and copper, while neglecting the local population.

Pakistani governments deny these allegations, saying that it has prioritized Balochistan’s development through investments in health, education and infrastructure projects.

The BLA has emerged as a significant security threat in recent years, carrying out major attacks in Balochistan and Sindh provinces while targeting security forces, ethnic Punjabis and Chinese nationals working on development projects.

The BLA launched coordinated attacks in Balochistan in August last year, killing over 50. Last month, dozens of fighters of the separatist outfit gained control of a small town in Khuzdar for hours and snatched weapons and vehicles from the local Levies force and set the Levies station on fire.

Violence by Baloch separatist factions, primarily the BLA, killed about 300 people last year, according to official statistics, marking an escalation in the decades-long conflict.

• This article originally appeared on Arab News Pakistan