By Saleem Ahmed and Asif Shahzad
QUETTA, Pakistan, Feb 4 (Reuters) – Pakistani forces used drones and helicopters to retake control of a southwestern city from separatist insurgents after a three-day battle, police said on Wednesday, as the number of civilians and security personnel killed in the violence rose to 58.
Saturday’s wave of coordinated attacks by the Baloch Liberation Army locked down Pakistan’s largest province as insurgents set off explosives and exchanged fire with security forces in more than a dozen places.
Security officials said they had killed 197 militants, including 41 killed on Friday in military operations that preceded the insurgent attacks.
BLA fighters, the most powerful insurgent group in the region, stormed schools, banks, markets and security installations in Balochistan in one of their biggest operations ever, killing more than 22 security personnel and 36 civilians.
“They were riding motorcycles and armed with grenades and rifles,” said Nasrullah Khan, 51, who lives in the provincial capital of Quetta.
“We have never seen such devastating and coordinated attacks before,” Khan added, saying the attacks began around 5 a.m. (0000 GMT) on Saturday.
ATTACK FROM SUNRISE
Trains running through Quetta have stopped running since Saturday, an official from the national railway operator said, while mobile internet was also down in much of the province, a Reuters journalist said.
Khan said he saw three police stations torched by the insurgents, who wreaked havoc in the city before security forces arrived on the scene. Later, he saw a military helicopter firing shells at the attackers.
“The situation is now under control as there is no fighting in the city but people are very scared and worried about their safety,” he said.
Pakistan’s interior ministry did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.
SIEGE IN THE DESERT
In the desert town of Nushki, home to about 50,000 people, insurgents seized control of the police station and other security facilities, triggering a three-day standoff.
“On January 31, around 5:30 am, some miscreants sneaked into our houses and took over the property,” Deputy Commissioner Naushki Maria Shamoon said, adding that the attackers took over the government complex and held the deputy commissioner hostage.
Police said seven officers were killed in the fighting before they regained control of the city on Monday night. Residents there were recovering without power Wednesday, local security official Col. Ansar Ali said.
“Helicopters and drones were used against the militants,” a security official said, adding that operations against the BLA continued elsewhere in the province.
The police provided details of the situation on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
LATE NIGHT ATTACKS
Mineral-rich Balochistan borders Iran and Afghanistan and is home to Beijing’s investments in the Gwadar deep-water port and other projects.
It has faced a decades-long insurgency led by ethnic Baloch separatists seeking greater autonomy and a greater share of its natural resources.
The BLA said on Tuesday it had killed 280 soldiers during its Operation Herof, or Black Storm, but offered no evidence.
Officials said the attacks began at 4am on Saturday with suicide blasts in Nushki and the fishing port of Pasni and gun and grenade attacks in 11 other places, including Quetta.
The insurgents captured at least six district administration offices, took provincial officials hostage and at one point advanced to within 1 km (0.6 miles) of the provincial chief minister’s office in Quetta, police officials said.
Before the attack, the BLA made announcements in mosques asking people to support them, saying they were waging a war to take over all state offices in the province, officials said.
EVOLVING EMERGENCY
Pakistan has blamed India for the attacks, without providing evidence for the accusations that could escalate tensions between the nuclear-powered neighbors, who in May fought their worst armed conflict in decades.
India’s foreign ministry rejected the allegations, saying Islamabad should instead address the “long-standing demands of its people in the region”.
Retired Lieutenant General Amir Riaz, who led the army in Balochistan from 2015 to 2017, said the insurgency had evolved over the past decade, adding that it would likely continue to alternate between stalemates and periods of intense violence.
“It has escalated. The response will be decisive, leading to a serious degradation of the BLA’s capability,” he said, denying that Pakistan’s military had used excessive force in Balochistan.
(Reporting by Saleem Ahmed in Quetta and Asif Shahzad in Islamabad; Additional reporting by Ariba Shahid in Karachi and Mushtaq Ali in Peshawar; Writing by Saad Sayeed; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Alex Richardson)