Militants abduct 16 laborers engaged on a mining undertaking in restive northwestern Pakistan

Militants ambushed a car in restive northwestern Pakistan and kidnapped 16 laborers engaged on a mining undertaking, police and two safety officers stated.

The insurgents additionally burned the car that had been carrying the employees on a slim street in Lakki Marwat district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan, police officer Mohammad Ijaz stated.

The assault occurred because the laborers had been touring from Lakki Marwat to a close-by mining undertaking, Ijaz stated. He gave no additional particulars.

Different safety officers stated the mining undertaking the place the boys labored is expounded to the Pakistan Atomic Vitality Fee, however that the kidnapped laborers are usually not its workers.

Nobody from the fee was instantly out there for remark.

Hours later, militants despatched a video to journalists, displaying a few of the kidnapped laborers. Within the video, one of many males was seen urging authorities to just accept the abductors’ calls for for his or her launch, nevertheless it was unclear what these calls for had been.

There was no fast declare for the kidnapping, however suspicion is prone to fall on the Pakistani Taliban, which have stepped up assaults on safety forces and civilians in current months.

The most recent assault got here a day after dozens of armed Baloch separatists seized a authorities workplace, robbed a financial institution and partially burned a police station in a distant district in southwestern Pakistan earlier than fleeing when safety forces arrived, police stated Thursday.

The outlawed Baloch Liberation Military claimed duty for the assault on Wednesday in Khuzdar in Balochistan, the place analysts say separatists have gotten as giant a risk to nationwide safety because the Pakistani Taliban.

There have been no casualties within the assault, authorities stated.

Suhail Khalid, a neighborhood police officer, stated the insurgents fled when safety forces arrived and the scenario was below management.

In current months, Balochistan and northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province have skilled a surge in militant violence, most blamed on the Baloch military and the Pakistani Taliban, often known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan.

The Pakistani Taliban is an ally of the Afghan Taliban, which seized energy in neighboring Afghanistan in 2021. The Afghan Taliban’s takeover has emboldened the Pakistani Taliban, whose leaders and fighters are hiding in Afghanistan.

Oil- and mineral-rich Balochistan is Pakistan’s largest but in addition least populated province. It’s the dwelling of the nation’s ethnic Baloch minority, who say they face discrimination and exploitation by the central authorities.