Pakistani Troops Kill 10 Militants in Southwest

Pakistani paramilitary forces Sunday killed more than 10 separatist rebels in the violence-stricken southwestern province of Baluchistan as part of a fresh operation to quell a long-running insurgency, officials said.

The operation in Dera Bugti district's Gandyari town, 250 kilometers (150 miles) southeast of the capital Quetta, came just three days after troops killed 30 militants in the same area.

Officials said the town, close to the borders of Baluchistan, Sindh and Punjab provinces, was the hub of the a separatist movement carrying out attacks on trains, bridges and security forces.

"We can confirm that 10 militants of the outlawed Baluchistan Republican Army (BRA) have been killed in an operation in Gandyari today," Manzoor Ahmed, a spokesman for the paramilitary Frontier Corps in Baluchistan, told AFP.

"The forces started operation against the BRA militants early in the morning after receiving information that they are hiding there," Ahmed said.

The death toll could not be independently verified.

Resource-rich Baluchistan is home to a long-running separatist conflict that was revived in 2004, with nationalists seeking to stop what they see as the exploitation of the region's natural resources and alleged rights abuses.

The idea of giving greater autonomy to the province, the size of Italy but with only nine million inhabitants, is highly sensitive in a country still scarred by the independence in 1971 of its eastern portion, now Bangladesh.

Earlier, gunmen in restive southwest Pakistan fired bullets at an oil tanker carrying fuel bound for NATO troops in Afghanistan, setting the vehicle and a car ablaze, police said.

The attack highlights the continuing dangers facing the U.S.-led coalition as it winds down operations in Afghanistan with 51,000 combat troops due to pull out of the country by the year's end.

Sunday's incident occurred around 200 kilometers (140 miles) southeast of Quetta, a province rife with Islamic militancy, sectarian violence and ethnic insurgency.

"Two gunmen riding a motorcycle intercepted a NATO oil tanker in Dera Murad Jamali city and fired bullets at it," local police official Ali Gohar Lehri told AFP.

"The tanker and a car close to it caught flames," he added.

"The driver and cleaner of the tanker and all passengers travelling in the car jumped out of their vehicles to save their lives."

The attackers escaped the crime scene. Another police official confirmed the shooting.

"The main highway between southern Sindh and southwestern Baluchistan province remained closed for around two hours because of the burning vehicles," Noor Muhammad Breach, a senior police official in the area, told AFP.

"Hundreds of vehicles were stuck on the highway," he added.

Pakistan has been a key transit route for the U.S.-led mission in landlocked Afghanistan but the delivery of supplies over the past 13 years has been far from straightforward.

NATO supply trucks, which carry everything from fuel to munitions and food, often come under attack on their journey between the Pakistani port city of Karachi and border crossing points.

Last month, Pakistani troops foiled an attack on a NATO supply terminal in the northwest, killing one attacker and forcing others to flee.

Supply lines have also been disrupted in the past because of tensions between the U.S. and Pakistan.

In 2013, members of Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) party forcibly searched trucks in an effort to halt NATO supplies as a protest against US drone strikes in Pakistan.