Four police officers were killed on Tuesday April 11 in a shootout with Islamist fighters in southwestern Pakistan.
A bomb attack had already killed four people the day before, we learned from the local police.
Gunmen, identified by police as belonging to the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the Pakistani Taliban, opened fire shortly before dawn on police officers in Kuchlak, about ten kilometers north of Quetta , capital of the province of Balochistan.
Islamist ideology
“
The militants opened fire on a group of police from a building, killing four
,” senior local police official Muhammad Zohaib told AFP.
"
A terrorist was also killed in the exchange of fire, and the others escaped
," he added.
A counterterrorism official, Aitzaz Goraya, said they belonged to the TTP, a separate group from the Afghan Taliban but driven by the same Islamist ideology.
This Monday, four people (two policemen and two civilians) were killed in the explosion of a bomb placed on a motorcycle in a busy market in Quetta.
The Balochistan Liberation Army, a separatist organization, claimed responsibility for the attack.
Balochistan, Pakistan's largest, least populated and poorest province, which borders Iran and Afghanistan, has been rocked intermittently for decades by a separatist rebellion.
Jihadist groups, such as the TTP, also operate there.
Hydrocarbons and minerals
The province is rich in hydrocarbons and minerals, but its population (about twelve million inhabitants) complains of being marginalized and despoiled of its natural resources.
Tensions in Baluchistan are heightened by the major construction sites of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), for which China must spend more than 50 billion dollars (42 billion euros), with the flagship of the deep-water port of Gwadar.
These Chinese projects have often created strong resentment in the province, especially with separatist groups who believe that the local population does not benefit from them, with most jobs going to Chinese labour.
