Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has declared that he will rid the South Asian nation of “all forms of terrorism” in response to a deadly attack in the province of Balochistan.
The terrorist attack has also been condemned by other senior figures in the federal cabinet, including Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmad.
Pakistan's military’s media wing – Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) – said that the terrorist raid on a security check post in the Kech district left 10 soldiers dead.
The “fire raid” by the terrorists took place on the evening of 25 January, as per the statement released on Thursday night.
The Pakistani military statement further said that the gunfire exchange also left one terrorist dead, while three others were detained by security forces.
"The armed forces are determined to eliminate terrorists from our soil no matter what the cost," the statement reads.
While Pakistan's Army is yet to confirm the identities of the attackers, Reuters claimed that the attack was carried out by Baloch Liberation Front (BLF), an armed insurgent group that seeks to carve out an independent Baloch state.
Reuters reported that a statement by the BLF claims that 17 Pakistani soldiers were killed in the attack. The insurgent group has also admitted to suffering a casualty in the raid.
According to Stanford University’s Mapping Militants Project, the BLF was founded in 1964 and has been targeting Pakistani security forces, gas pipelines, and workers involved in Islamabad-backed infrastructure projects in the region.
The insurgents in Balochistan have often accused the Pakistani state of overlooking the province’s development needs, in spite of it having large reserves of natural gas and gold.