QUETTA, July 21: At least seven personnel of Pakistan Coast Guards (PCG) were killed and three other people injured in an ambush in Pishikan area near Gwadar on Saturday.

“A coast guards checkpoint near the coastal town was attacked with rockets and automatic weapons,” an official in Gwadar told Dawn.

According to sources, the assailants on a pick-up and three motorcycles attacked the post. “They fired a rocket at the post and after that motorcyclists resorted to firing with automatic weapons,” official sources quoted a witness as saying.

Six personnel of the PCG were killed on the spot and another died on way to the Gwadar District Hospital. Three civilians were injured with two of them reported to be in critical condition.

The sources said the attack was so sudden that the security personnel could not retaliate. Some sources claimed that the assailants were wearing the uniform of a security organisation. However, officials did not confirm this.

The armed men, who were around a dozen in number, escaped after the attack.

Senior officials of the coast guards and the administration took the bodies and the injured to the hospital. Law-enforcement personnel cordoned off the area and launched a search operation for the attackers.

The killed personnel were identified as Subedar Abdul Ghani, Lance Nikes Asif Raza, Kamal Khan and Sher Ali, and soldiers Ifran Bashir, Riaz Hussain and Abdul Sattar.

The sources said that the bodies were sent to their native areas.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for the banned Baloch Liberation Front claimed responsibility for the attack.

Calling from some unknown location, the spokesman who introduced himself as Bashman Baloch told journalists in Quetta that the BLF had carried out the attack and killed 15 soldiers of coast guards.

Last week, a tanker of the coast guards carrying water for personnel in Nalate area of Gwadar district was damaged in a grenade attack.

The PCG arrested over two dozen suspects during an operation after that incident. Eighteen people, among them six PCG personnel, were injured when the vehicle carrying the suspects to Gwadar overturned.

Balochistan Chief Minster Nawab Aslam Raisani condemned Saturday’s raid and ordered the officials concerned to arrest the attackers.

Agencies add: Coast guard official Hidayatullah said the assault initially killed six members of the force and wounded two others who later died.