AFP/Islamabad

Pakistani paramilitary troops said they launched a military operation yesterday in the insurgency-racked southwestern province of Baluchistan and killed some 40 rebels.

The toll could not be independently verified.  

The resource-rich province is home to a long-running separatist conflict that was revived in 2004, with nationalists seeking to stop what they see as the exploitation of the region’s natural resources and alleged rights abuses.

The Frontier Corps said in a statement the operation began early yesterday in the Farod area of Kalat district, around 300km southwest of the provincial capital Quetta.

“Around 40 insurgents belonging to the Baluch Republican Army (BRA) and Baluch Liberation Army (BLA) were killed during the operation,” it said.

“Six vehicles were also destroyed during the operation and it is still going on.”

Security and rebel accounts of clashes often differ greatly and spokesmen for the two separatist groups have so far declined to comment.

Some local residents said a military helicopter had been shot down, but the Frontier Corps denied the reports.  

It said the helicopter made an emergency landing on a road in Kalat and the pilot and co-pilot were safe.

The fighting in Baluchistan attracts little public attention, unlike the clashes with the Taliban in the northwest.

The idea of giving greater autonomy to the province, the size of Italy but with only 9mn inhabitants, is highly sensitive in a country still scarred by the independence in 1971 of its eastern portion, now Bangladesh.

Baluchistan, spread over an unforgiving landscape of mountains and deserts abutting Iran and Afghanistan, is rich in gas and mineral deposits — adding a financial dimension to the battle.

In recent years many people suspected of links to separatist groups have mysteriously disappeared, allegedly at the hands of the intelligence agencies.

Meanwhile in the North and South Waziristan, clashes between two Pakistani Taliban factions have left at least 20 dead, security officials and militant sources said yesterday, in a sign of the intense rivalries within the umbrella grouping.

The fighting took place in the tribal regions between supporters of Khan Said Sajna, a senior commander once tipped to lead the group, and those of former leader Hakimullah Mehsud who was killed in a US drone strike last November.

A security official in Islamabad told AFP that at least 15 militants were killed in a overnight clash between the groups along the border of the North and South Waziristan tribal agencies.  

Another security official and two militant sources in North Waziristan confirmed the clash.

Fighting broke out once again yesterday, killing a further five militants.

“At least five people including a commander of Hakimullah Mehsud was killed in a rocket attack on a vehicle in South Waziristan,” a local security official said, naming the commander as one “Shadeed Mehsud”.

“The dead bodies were severely burnt in the attack carried out in Shaktoi area and complete identification of the militants was difficult,” he added.

The second attack was confirmed by a militant source.

The reason for the clashes was unclear. But the umbrella Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) group which was formed in 2007 has long been riven by infighting.

Khan Said Sajna, head of his own faction, was a strong candidate to become TTP chief following Mehsud’s death.  

But the movement’s Shura (advisory board) at the last minute elected Mullah Fazlullah, who hails from Swat and is believed to be hiding in Afghanistan.  

The Pakistani government began negotiations through intermediaries with the TTP in February to try to end its bloody seven-year insurgency.

The TTP have demanded the release of what they called “non-combatant” prisoners and the establishment of a “peace zone” from which security forces would be barred.