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The arrests were made during a search operation in Kurram, a
district in the restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where at
least 130 people have died in recent months there in clashes
between rival Shiite and Sunni tribes.
The district has been cut off from the rest of the country since
November after authorities blocked roads following clashes
between heavily armed Shiite and Sunni tribes. Road closures
around Kurram has caused a shortage of food and medicines there.
The operation was launched days after insurgents attacked aid
trucks and killed five soldiers and a truck driver, according to
Abbas Majid, a senior police official. He said officers also
recovered some of the supplies looted by the suspects during
recent attacks on aid trucks.
In the attack Thursday night in Balochistan, militants targeted
a police post on the outskirts of Quetta, the provincial
capital, triggering a shootout in which two officers were
killed, local police chief Qasim Rodini said. He said an
exchange of fire was still ongoing.
Earlier in the day, the outlawed Baloch Liberation Army claimed
responsibility for the killing of seven passengers in an attack
on buses in Balochistan on Tuesday.
The group said in a statement that its fighters attacked the
buses in the town of Rakhni and claimed those killed were
affiliated with the military and intelligence services. Local
authorities dismissed the claim, saying the victims were
civilians with no ties to security forces.
The Baloch Liberation Army, which operates mostly in Balochistan,
has also targeted Chinese nationals working on
multi-billion-dollar projects in the China-Pakistan Economic
Corridor. Last year, the group killed dozens of people in three
separate attacks on vehicles.
Balochistan has been the scene of a long-running insurgency with
the separatists seeking independence from the central government
in Islamabad. Although Pakistani authorities say they have
quelled the insurgency, violence has persisted.
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Associated Press writers Abdul Sattar in Quetta, Pakistan, and
Riaz Khan in Peshawar, Pakistan, contributed to this report.
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