Taleban kill 4 soldiers in daredevil Quetta attack

quetta — Pakistani Taleban militants shot dead four paramilitary soldiers in Pakistan’s western city of Quetta, where last month seven security men were killed in a suicide attack, police and the militant group said.

The Frontier Corps troopers were patrolling the residential neighbourhood of Langoabad on motorcycles when they were fired on by gunmen also riding on bikes, said Naseebullah Khan, Senior Superintendent of Police for Quetta.

“The four men were shot in the head,” Khan told Reuters, adding that handguns were used in the attack.

Outlawed Tehrik-i-Taleban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility for the attack.

Quetta is the capital of Balochistan province, rich in resources and at the heart of $58 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) stretching from the Arabian Sea to China’s Xinjiang region. A Pakistani minister recently said that India is trying to sabotage the CPEC.

The province, the poorest and least developed in Pakistan, has suffered nearly a decade of separatist violence against the government.

The area also is plagued by attacks from militant movements like the Taleban, who are separate from but loosely allied with the Taleban movement that ruled neighbouring Afghanistan in the 1990s and has fought an insurgency against western and Afghan government forces since 2001. —