By Staff Reporter
KHUZDAR: Unknown gunmen stormed a construction camp in southwestern Pakistan’s restive Balochistan province late on Thursday, abducting 18 labourers at gunpoint and setting fire to at least eight vehicles and machinery, in the second such attack on workers in the region within four days, local officials said.
The assault targeted a private construction company’s camp and crushing plant in the remote Naal area of Khuzdar district, some 80 km from the district headquarters, according to a senior official with the paramilitary Levies force. Over two dozen armed men carried out the raid, which comes amid a surge in violence against infrastructure projects in the insurgency-plagued province.
“They set at least eight vehicles and other machinery on fire and took away workers with them [to an] unknown destination,” the senior Levies force official in Naal told Dawn newspaper. The labourers were employed by D. Baluch construction company on a road project aimed at linking Naal with the districts of Washuk and Basima, officials said. The project is part of broader efforts to improve connectivity in Balochistan, where separatist militants have long targeted development sites, accusing the central government of exploiting the province’s mineral wealth without benefiting locals.
Zulfiqar Ahmed, the company manager, said the attackers initially seized 20 people from the camp before releasing two en route to an undisclosed location. “The armed men kidnapped 20 labourers from the camp but two of them were freed later on their way to an unknown destination,” Ahmed said. He added that all the abducted workers hailed from Sindh province, the neighbouring region to the east.
Officials confirmed that at least eight vehicles were completely gutted in the blaze, with additional machinery damaged. No group has claimed responsibility for the incident.
Security forces have launched a search operation across the area to locate the kidnapped workers and apprehend the assailants, a Levies spokesman said, though no immediate breakthroughs were reported. The attack follows a similar incident three days earlier in the neighbouring Mastung district, where unidentified gunmen kidnapped nine labourers as they returned home from a building site in the Dasht area. The assailants also hijacked the workers’ pickup truck at gunpoint. That kidnapping was only disclosed publicly by officials on Friday.
No group has claimed responsibility for either assault, and the motive remains unclear. Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest but least developed province, has been the scene of escalating violence in recent years, with Baloch separatists frequently targeting non-local workers and Chinese-linked projects as symbols of perceived economic exploitation.
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