Gas pipeline blown up in SW Pakistan
Pakistan Times Balochistan Bureau Report

QUETTA: Suspected tribal insurgents blew up a pipeline supplying natural gas to a major southwest city in Pakistan's restive Baluchistan province, officials said on Friday.

Police said the Thursday night attack damaged the pipeline but did not disrupt gas supplies to Quetta, the provincial capital of Baluchistan.

"Saboteurs detonated explosives which damaged a three-metre (10-foot) part of the pipeline in Dhadhar," a town some 90 kilometers (56 miles) southeast of Quetta, local police official Ali Akbar Magsi said.

Recap

Bombs and rockets targeting railway tracks, government installations and natural gas facilities have exploded almost daily since the start of the year in Baluchistan, the biggest and poorest of Pakistan's four provinces.

Police have blamed the string of attacks on nationalist tribesmen demanding a bigger share of the region's natural resources and jobs in state projects as well as more political rights.

On March-17 eight paramilitary soldiers and dozens of civilians and tribesmen died in violent clashes at Dera Bugti, near the country's largest gasfield at Sui.●