Miners and workers, accompanied by the coffins of the victims, take part in a demonstration against these killings in the Duki district, in the Pakistani province of Balochistan, on October 11, 2024. FARID KHAN / AFP Twenty miners were killed on the night of Thursday October 10 to Friday October 11 during an attack carried out by a group of armed attackers in Balochistan, a province in the southwest of Pakistan, police communicated to Agence France-Presse (AFP). The victims slept in accommodation located on the mining site. “Around 12:30 a.m., thirty-five to forty men in civilian clothes and heavily armed opened fire on the workers of a coal mine for around thirty minutes before fleeing,” said Asim Shafi, the head of police in the Duki district where the attack took place, 225 kilometers from the provincial capital, to AFP. “They were equipped with rocket launchers and grenades,” he added, although the attack has not been claimed at this stage. Kaleemullah Kakar, a senior official in the district, confirmed the death toll to AFP, adding that seven other workers were injured during the attack. “I lay down and closed my eyes,” Juma Khan, one of the survivors, told the news agency. There was a lot of gunfire and grenades going off. I tried to enter a room where my colleagues were sleeping. I saw that they were already awake. I was shot in the left arm and fell,” adding that the attackers also set fire to several machines at the site. Balochistan, neighboring Afghanistan and Iran, is Pakistan’s poorest province, despite significant gas and mining resources, over which separatists claim control. Many of the extraction projects are financed and operated by foreign countries, notably neighboring China, which armed factions regularly target, accusing them of hoarding wealth without sharing it with the local population. Beijing has invested billions of dollars in Pakistan, its closest ally in the region, in recent years. But the latter struggled to guarantee the safety of Chinese personnel employed on these projects. Armed factions regularly carry out raids On Friday, hundreds of workers and members of local unions demonstrated alongside the bodies of the victims, amid a surge in attacks targeting civilians in the region. On the night of Sunday October 6 to Monday October 7, the Balochistan Liberation Army claimed responsibility for a bomb attack targeting a convoy of vehicles in southern Karachi, in which two Chinese workers working in a coal factory were killed. Armed factions also regularly carry out deadly attacks against the police and Pakistanis from other provinces, notably the Punjabis. They are the majority in the country, and are seen as dominant in the ranks of the Pakistani army, which is leading the offensive against armed groups in Balochistan. The Balochistan Liberation Army also claimed responsibility at the end of August for attacks coordinated by dozens of attackers which left at least thirty-nine dead, one of the worst tolls in this region. Friday’s attack comes days before Pakistan hosts a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a bloc founded by Russia and China to strengthen ties with Central Asian states, which will be attended by many heads of foreign governments. Read also | Article reserved for our subscribers Pakistan: deadly attacks in Baluchistan Add to your selections Le Monde with AFP Reuse this content
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