At least 10 Coast Guards killed in Gwadar checkpost attack

QUETTA: At least ten personnel of the Coast Guards were killed and seven others sustained injuries on Saturday when their checkpost was attacked in Gwadar.

Officials of the district administration Gwadar said that some unidentified armed men attacked the Sansar checkpost situated in the Pakistan-Iran border area.

At that time, 14 personnel of the Coast Guards were performing their duties at the checkpost. The armed men attacked the checkpost with heavy weapons, including rockets, said officials of the provincial Home Department.

Reports suggested that the attack was so sudden and intense that seven personnel of the Coast Guards died on the spot, while seven others sustained injuries.

After the attack, the assailants fled the scene leaving behind the victims in a pool of blood.

Owing to the poor communication and road network in the area, a rescue operation was launched after several hours of the incident. The district administration claimed it had dispatched additional troops of the Frontier Corps (FC), Levies, and Coast Guards to launch a search operation. No arrests were made till the filing of this report.

The officials of the Gwadar administration said that the injured were shifted to hospitals in Gwadar and later Ormara for treatment.

Later, the bodies and the injured were shifted to Karachi. However, the condition of three injured was stated to be precarious.

Balochistan Governor Muhammad Khan Achakzai and Chief Minister Dr Abdul Malik Baloch strongly condemned the attack and expressed grief over the loss of lives of the personnel of the Coast Guards. In their separate messages, the governor and the chief minister directed the law enforcement agencies to apprehend the attackers involved in the killings.