By Aamir Latif
KARACHI
Suspected separatists have killed two policemen Saturday after firing a series of rockets on a security convoy in the southwestern Pakistani province of Baluchistan, police said.
The police chief of Pasni district Asghar Ali narrowly escaped the rocket attack.
Ali later told reporters that militants had fired several rockets that completely damaged one of the vehicles.
No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, the latest in a string of ambushes on security forces in the violence-hit province, which borders Iran and Afghanistan. Security forces however suspect secular Baluch militants.
The militants loyal to the banned Baluchistan Liberation Army (BLA), Baluchistan Liberation Front (BLF), and Baluchistan Republican Army (BRA) claim that the province was forcibly incorporated into Pakistan in 1947, the year the two independent states-India and Pakistan- came into being.
Baluchistan, which is the size of Italy, and rich in copper, zinc and natural gas, has been riddled with violence for over six decades.
Several military operations have been carried out over the years to contain the separatist movement. The successive operations have claimed thousands of lives on both sides.
The current spell of violence was triggered in 2006 following the killing of former state chief minister and a veteran Baluch leader, Nawab Akbar Bugti in an army operation ordered by former military dictator General Pervez Musharraf.
