Terrorists shot dead a kidnapped Pakistani army officer as his comrades were closing in to try to rescue him in the restive southwest province of Baluchistan, the military said on Thursday.
Baluchistan has long been the scene of a low-level insurgency by the outlawed Baluchistan Liberation Army, or BLA, and other separatist groups demanding independence from the central government in Islamabad. Although the government says it has quelled the insurgency, violence in the province has persisted.
The BLA, which was designated a terrorist group by the United States in 2019, had claimed responsibility earlier this week for abducting an officer and his relatives on Tuesday while they were traveling on a remote highway near the town of Ziarat, 100 kilometers (60 miles) northeast of Quetta, the provincial capital.
The family was headed to a tourist resort in the area. The attackers later that night freed all the hostages except Col. Laeeq Mirza and his cousin. The colonel’s body was found on Thursday during a search operation by security forces.
Pakistan’s military said its troops and helicopters started a search and rescue operation and spotted up to eight terrorists in a storm drain in nearby mountains late on Wednesday.
“On sensing their possible encirclement, militants shot the Colonel,” the military’s communications arm said in a statement. Two of the terrorists died in a gunfight but the rest escaped, it added.
The body of the cousin, Umar Javed, was found on Saturday, dumped in a drain in the area, according to two Pakistani intelligence officials speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.
Baluchistan provincial home minister Mir Zia Lango condemned Javed’s killing and expressed the authorities’ determination to “eliminate terrorism” from the province.
The military said in an earlier statement that efforts were underway to find and rescue Javed. During the search operations, security forces killed nine terrorists, the statement added.
Jaend Baluch, a purported spokesman for BLA, denied any casualties among the separatists.
