Gunmen storm a camp in Pakistan’s southwest and kidnap 20 laborers

QUETTA, Pakistan (AP) — Gunmen stormed a camp in Pakistan’s southwest and kidnapped 20 laborers, police said Sunday. It’s the second assault in as many days in restive Balochistan province, where separatist and militants are stepping up their insurgency against the central government.

The assistant commissioner of Musa Khel district, Dilraj Kalara, said the armed men entered the camp on Sunday morning, torching bulldozers and other machinery and seizing the men.

The workers were staying in a camp set up by a private energy company, Kalara said. Separatists accuse Islamabad of unfairly exploiting oil- and mineral-rich Balochistan at the expense of locals.

Nobody has claimed responsibility for the kidnappings or for the deaths of seven men who were fatally shot at their rented home a day earlier in Panjgur town, also in Balochistan.

All seven were from Punjab, which is in Pakistan’s east, and from the same family. Separatists have often killed workers and others from Punjab to force them to leave the southwest.

On Sunday, Punjab’s Information and Culture Minister Azma Zahid Bokhari said authorities were deeply upset by the Saturday killings.

“I want to know for how long Punjabis will be targeted in Balochistan,” Bokhari said at a press conference in Lahore. “I demand the chief minister ensure the safety and security of people from Punjab and take stern action against those targeting them.”

Muhammad Mubashir said eight members from his family had gone to Balochistan for work. Only one survived. They were aged between 20 and 40.

The seven were sleeping when two gunmen stormed the room with automatic weapons and began spraying the workers with bullets.

The survivor, Imran, was on the phone when the shooting started and immediately fled, according to another relative, Mudassir Aslam, who spoke to him after the incident.

“Three of them were getting married and their families were busy preparing for their weddings,” said Mudassir. “As soon as the news reached our family in Shujabad, there was chaos in our house. It was nothing less than a bomb going off.”

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Babar Dogar in Lahore and Asim Tanveer in Multan contributed to this report.

The Associated Press