A terrorist commando that tried to assault the Gwadar Port Authority facilities this Wednesday was completely decimated by the Pakistani security forces, after a shootout that lasted about two hours. The militants killed – seven or eight, according to sources – belonged to the Beluchi Liberation Army. Specifically, the Majid brigade, its suicide squad, dedicated to harassing the armed forces of Pakistan and Chinese interests in the province of Balochistan. At least two soldiers would have perished in the assault, although some sources speak of three or even four.
The attack began with an explosion and continued for a long hour, by terrorists armed with assault rifles and grenade launchers. Their advance, however, would have been quickly stopped, in a highly militarized area.
The declared target of the attack, according to Baluchi secessionist media, was the offices of the Pakistani military intelligence services, ISI and MI. However, in the vicinity of the attacked building there is a residential colony and the authorities have been quick to clarify that the personnel of several “UN missions and agencies” would not have suffered any harm. Gwadar is the exit to the Arabian Sea of ??the ambitious China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which begins 3,000 kilometers further north, on the border between Xinjian and Kashmir under Pakistani occupation.
The Gwadar port itself – which a few years ago was a wasteland – has been built by China and many Chinese citizens work in the city. Last August, several Chinese engineers emerged unscathed from an attack, the work of the same Beluchi commando. The two militants were killed. Less than two years ago, another terrorist attack, this time in Karachi, killed the director of the Confucius Institute and two teachers, all of them Chinese nationals.
Without leaving Gwadar, another attack by the Majid Brigade against two military vehicles last November took the lives of fourteen soldiers.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has promised to launch the second phase of construction of the China-Pakistan Corridor during his second term – which has just begun – despite the many setbacks, delays, controversies and attacks in the first phase.
Finally, it should be remembered that at the beginning of the year, Iran and Pakistan exchanged projectiles. Their target was not the soldiers of one army or another, but rather the Beluchi militants sheltered in their neighbor’s territory. Balochistan is the most arid and extensive province of Pakistan, as well as the most depopulated and poorest, despite its gas fields.
