Coordinated militant attacks in Pakistan's Balochistan kill 39

Separatist militants attacked police stations, railway lines, and vehicles on highways in Pakistan's province of Balochistan, killing at least 39 people, officials said on Monday, in the most widespread assault by ethnic insurgents in years.

Militants have fought a decades-long ethnic insurgency to demand the secession of the resource-rich southwestern province, home to a number of major China-led projects including a strategic port and a gold and copper mine.

The largest of the attacks targeted vehicles from buses to goods trucks on a major highway, killing at least 23 people, officials said, with ten vehicles set ablaze.

A rail line between Pakistan and Iran and a railway bridge linking Quetta, the provincial capital, to the rest of the country were also hit with explosives during the attacks, railways official Muhammad Kashif said, adding that rail traffic with Quetta had been suspended.

Police said they had found six bodies that have yet to be identified, near the attack on the railway bridge.

Militants also targeted police and security stations in the sprawling province, officials said, one of which killed at least 10 people.

Militant group the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) took responsibility in a statement emailed to journalists that claimed many more attacks, including one on a major paramilitary base, though Pakistani authorities have yet to confirm these.

On Sunday night, armed men blocked a highway in Balochistan, Pakistan's largest province, marched passengers off the vehicles, and shot them after checking their identity cards, said a senior superintendent of police, Ayub Achakzai.

"The armed men also not only killed passengers but also killed the drivers of trucks carrying coal," said Hameed Zahir, the deputy commissioner of the area, adding that at least 10 trucks had been set on fire after their drivers were killed.

Militants have targeted workers from the eastern province of Punjab whom they see as exploiting their resources. In the past, they have also targeted Chinese interests and citizens operating in the province.

Balochistan, which borders both Iran and Afghanistan, is Pakistan's largest province by size, but the least populated and it remains largely underdeveloped, with high levels of poverty.

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