Karachi: Three heavily-armed militants on Saturday stormed a luxury hotel in Pakistan’s port city of Gwadar in the restive Balochistan province, leading to a fierce gunbattle in which four persons including the attackers were killed, police said. The armed men entered the upscale Pearl Continental (PC) Hotel and opened random firing, a senior police official said. They shot dead a guard at the entrance, the army’s media wing Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) said. A shootout between the militants and the security forces broke out at the hotel as the anti-terrorism force, the Army and the Frontier Corps were called in, Gwadar Station House Officer (SHO) Aslam Bangulzai said.
Balochistan Home Minister Ziaullah Langov said that all the three attackers were killed by the security forces. He said that some of the guests in the hotel were also injured but their number was not immediately known. The outlawed Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) claimed responsibility of the attack which it said was carried out by the militants linked with its Majeed Brigade group. Locals said several gunshots were heard after the terrorists entered the luxury hotel. Gwadar port is one of the focal points of the USD 50 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) with many Chinese workers from other provinces of Pakistan working at the port. All foreign and local guests staying at the hotel had been safely evacuated, Express Tribune quoted Balochistan Information Minister Zahoor Buledi as saying.
Balochistan, which borders Afghanistan and Iran, is Pakistan’s largest and poorest province, rife with ethnic, sectarian and separatist insurgencies. On April 18, unidentified gunmen donning uniforms of paramilitary soldiers massacred at least 14 passengers, including Pakistan Navy personnel, after forcing them to disembark from buses on a highway in Balochistan. China is investing heavily in Balochistan under the CPEC. The CPEC, launched in 2015, is a planned network of roads, railways and energy projects linking China’s resource-rich Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region with Pakistan’s strategic Gwadar Port on the Arabian Sea. The BLA is one of the most-organised terrorist group of Baloch nationalists fighting against security forces. The group was also in
