Ten Pakistani soldiers were killed in southwestern Pakistan while responding to "cowardly acts of terrorism", the country's military has said, after dozens of civilians died in coordinated overnight attacks.
Separatist militant attacks on police stations, railway lines and highways in Pakistan's restive province of Balochistan, coupled with retaliatory operations by security forces, killed more than 60 people, officials said.
"During the conduct of operations, 14 brave sons of soil including ten security forces soldiers and four personnel of law enforcement agencies, having fought gallantly, made the ultimate sacrifice," a statement from the military said, referring to agencies deployed in the region that include paramilitary troops.
Militants have fought a decades-long ethnic insurgency to demand the secession of the resource-rich southwestern province ,home to a number of major China-led projects including a strategic port and a gold and copper mine.
"These attacks are a well thought out plan to create anarchy in Pakistan," Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi said in a statement, adding that security forces had killed 12 militants in operations after the attacks yesterday and today.
Vehicles from buses to goods trucks were targeted on a major highway, in the largest of the attacks, which killed at least 23 people, officials said, with 35 vehicles set ablaze.
A rail line between Pakistan and Iran and a railway bridge linking Quetta, the provincial capital, to the rest of the country were also hit with explosives during the attacks, a railways official said, adding that rail traffic with Quetta had been suspended.
Police said they had found six bodies that have yet to be identified, near the attack on the railway bridge.
Militants also targeted police and security stations in the sprawling province, officials said, one of which killed at least ten people.
Militant group the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) took responsibility in a statement emailed to journalists that claimed many more attacks, including one on a major paramilitary base, though Pakistani authorities have yet to confirm these.
Last night, armed men blocked a highway in Balochistan, Pakistan's largest province, marched passengers off the vehicles, and shot them after checking their identity cards, a senior police official said.
"The armed men also not only killed passengers but also killed the drivers of trucks carrying coal," said the deputy commissioner of the area, adding that at least ten trucks had been set on fire after their drivers were killed.
Militants have targeted workers from the eastern province of Punjab whom they see as exploiting their resources. In the past, they have also targeted Chinese interests and citizens operating in the province.
China runs the strategic deep water port of Gawadar in Balochistan's south, as well as a gold and copper mine in the west.
The BLA said its fighters had targeted military personnel travelling in civilian clothes, who were shot after being identified.
Pakistan's interior ministry said the dead were innocent citizens.
Six security personnel, three civilians and one tribal elder made up the ten killed in clashes with armed militants who stormed a station of the Balochistan Levies in the central district of Kalat, police said.
Officials said police stations had also been attacked in the two southern coastal towns, but the toll had yet to be confirmed.
The office of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif condemned the attacks in a statement, vowing that security forces would retaliate and bring those responsible to justice.
Balochistan, which borders both Iran and Afghanistan, is Pakistan's largest province by size, but the least populated and it remains largely underdeveloped, with high levels of poverty.
