Pakistan: Gunmen kill ten workers in Gwadar, Balochistan province, May 13

Event

Unidentified gunmen murdered ten constructions workers near the southwestern port city of Gwadar in Balochistan province on Saturday, May 13. According to officials, the victims were constructing a road when the attackers drove up on a motorcycle and shot them. Security forces have been deployed into the area and are searching for the gunmen. No group has claimed responsibility for the shooting.

Context

Security officials said that militants have attempted to disrupt construction in the area in recent years. Gwadar is an emerging port city that is part of an “economic corridor” project that connects China’s Xinjiang region to the Arabian Sea. According to media reports, some of the locals who carry out attacks on the construction workers view the projects as  taking over their land.

Balochistan province, located in north-central Pakistan, has been wracked by violence in recent months and years, due in large part to a prominent arms smuggling route that runs through it. Car bombs, suicide bombings, and armed attacks are common. These often target the Balochistan Frontier Corps and local police forces, as well as lawyers. In 2016 alone, there were well more than 100 terrorism-related deaths in the provincial capital of Quetta. At least 70 people were killed and dozens wounded in the Quetta Civil Hospital bombing in August 2016 that targeted the emergency wing of the hospital where a group of mourners, many of them lawyers, were gathered after a colleague was shot by assailants in the city earlier in the day. The attack was claimed by Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a splinter faction of the TTP.

Advice

Individuals present in the region are advised to avoid the affected area and to follow all instructions issued by the authorities.

Due to a high threat from terrorism, as well as kidnapping and sectarian violence throughout Pakistan, some Western governments advise their citizens against nonessential travel to the country as foreign nationals, and in particular Westerners, may be directly targeted.