QUETTA: A pre-dawn attack on a Pakistan Coast Guards check post left seven personnel dead and seven others injured near Balochistan’s port city of Gwadar.
Armed militants attacked the check post situated in the Pakistan-Iran border area of Sanstar on Saturday and fled into nearby mountains immediately afterwards.
Home Secretary Balochistan Akbar Hussain Durrani confirmed the incident, adding that the militants attacked the check post with heavy weapons, including rockets.
“It was a pre-dawn rocket attack on the checkpost that left seven soldiers dead and injured seven others,” Mr Durrani told Dawn.
The banned Baloch Liberation Front (BLF) organisation claimed responsibility for the attack.
The injured personnel were shifted to Gwadar for medical treatment, where, according to the hospitals sources, three of the injured were in a serious condition.
A contingent of law enforcement personnel was dispatched to the area to launch a search operation but no arrests were made until the filing of this report.
Gohram Baloch, a spokesman for BLF, told media by satellite phone that 25 PCG men had been killed in the attack and another two had been taken hostage.
He said that during the attack two BLF men suffered bullet injuries in their hands. Three AK-47 rifles, three machineguns, a G-3 rifle, live rounds, a vehicle and a motorcycle were taken away by the BLF men, he added.
A year ago, militants had killed more than 10 Coast Guards personnel in a similar attack near Gwadar.
