Pakistan clashes leave 36 dead

2008-07-21 17:01

Quetta, Pakistan - Fierce clashes between Pakistani forces and separatist insurgents in troubled south-western Baluchistan province have left six paramilitary troops and 30 rebels dead, officials said on Monday.

In a major flare-up of an insurgency that has simmered for years in the gas- and mineral-rich region, security forces launched a major operation against rebel camps after a paramilitary convoy came under attack on Saturday.

Troops destroyed two insurgent bases used for plotting attacks in the operation near Uch, a town in the restive Dera Bugti district of Baluchistan, arresting 30 militants and seizing a cache of weapons, they said.

"The operation against miscreants has been wound up," on Monday, Lieutenant Colonel Shahid Mehmood Khan, a spokesperson for the paramilitary Frontier Corps, told AFP.

A Frontier Corps statement said six paramilitary soldiers died in the fighting and nine others were wounded, while "according to confirmed reports a large number of miscreants have been killed".

It did not give a figure but intelligence officials in Quetta said at least 30 insurgents, including three rebel commanders, were killed.

Impoverished Baluchistan, which borders Iran and Afghanistan, has been hit by years of unrest blamed on ethnic Baluch tribes seeking more political rights and a greater share of profits from the region's natural resources.

The province has also been hit by attacks blamed on Islamist Taliban militants, but officials say that the separatist insurgents do not have links to the hardliners.

- AFP