Separatists Ambush Bus, Kill Dozens After Checking IDs

Late Thursday gunmen - clad in police and paramilitary gear - ambushed a bus on a highway in a remote area of the southwestern Baluchistan province and killed more than a dozen people, Pakistani officials have confirmed.

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Prime Minister Imran Khan ordered authorities "to make every possible effort to identify and to bring the perpetrators of the barbaric act to justice" which he called "an act of terror."

According to the Pakistani navy, sailors and officers were among the dead. One official, who requested anonymity, stated that up to nine navy personnel had been killed in the brutal attack.  

"In this tragic incident, 14 passengers were forced off the bus, they were lined up in a nearby open area and killed by the terrorists,” local official Jehangir Dashti stated.

"Dozens of gunmen" were involved in the attack along the Makran coastal highway, Dashti told The Associated Press. Balochistan provincial police chief Mohsin Ali Butt confirmed to CNN that there were 15 to 20 attackers.

The Baloch Raaji Aajoi Sangar (BRAS), an alliance of armed ethnic Baloch separatist groups, claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement.

"Those who were targeted carried [identification] cards of the Pakistan Navy and Coast Guards, and they were only killed after they were identified," Al Jazeera reported citing Baloch Khan, a BRAS spokesperson, said.

Authorities acknowledged that the passengers were indeed targeted.

"They identified non-Baloch by checking their identity cards and employee cards," provincial information minister Zahoor Buledi said. "They took them to the nearby mountains and shot them dead after tying their hands."

Separatists have long waged war in oil-rich Baluchistan, citing discrimination and demanding a fairer share of resources and wealth.

The Baluchistan region is the location to a number of multi-billion-dollar trade and road projects in the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a joint China-Pakistan venture which would link southwestern China to the Arabian Sea through Pakistan.

"We will definitely look at the security precautions on the route, but it is a very long route from Karachi to Gwadar. We have many security posts, but whenever terrorists want to carry out such attacks, they can target [vehicles] in remote locations," provincial home minister Zia Langove said. 

Langove added that "a search operation is ongoing in the area" to find the perpetrators.