By Mashal Khan

QUETTA, Pakistan (TSAT) - Protest rallies held on Friday across Balochistan, southwestern province of Pakistan against the Baloch terrorists organisations for targeting civilian and security forces in the region.

The demonstrations were arranged by local elders of different districts of the province in which hundreds of male and females participated in the rallies.

The protesters were holding placards and banners with slogans “Stop killing innocent people” and demanded the western countries to arrest the key leaders of these terrorists groups living in their countries and planning activities against Pakistan.

The protestors also chanted slogans against the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), Baloch Republican Army (BRA) and Baloch Republican Front (BLF), the main terrorists organisations which have been carrying out multiple terrorist attacks against the security forces and have been killing innocent civilians in the province since long.

On Thursday, BLA also claimed responsibility of a bomb explosion in northeastern city of Lahore, in which three innocent civilians were killed including two children while over 20 other were wounded.

The group so far have killed hundreds of civilians in various blasts and targeted killings in Balochistan while have also viciously launched cowardly attacks against the Pakistan security forces as well.

In 2019, The US listed BLA as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) and also imposed economic sanctions on the group and anyone affiliated with it.

“BLA is an armed separatist group that targets security forces and civilians, mainly in ethnic Baloch areas of Pakistan,” the State Department said in a statement, citing a number of attacks, including against Chinese engineers in August 2018 and the Chinese consulate in Karachi in November 2018, according to Al-Jazeera.

These terrorist groups have also been proscribed in Pakistan and the country’s interior ministry have listed them as terrorists groups since 2006.

While the group is also considered a terrorist organisation in the U.K.

However, despite being a terrorist organisation, the group key leaders are living in western countries and even some of them have been granted asylum there.

In November 2018, the BLA also carried out attack on Chinese consulate in Karachi, killing several civilians. These Baloch terrorist organisations have orchestrated heinous crimes against the state of Pakistan and have remained involved in furthering the nefarious agenda of hostile forces.

In December 2018, the mastermind of many major terrorist attacks and key leader of BLA Aslam Acho along with other several terrorists was killed in a suicide attack in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

Pakistani officials have repeatedly asserted that these terrorist organisations are foreign funded and are being sponsored by India. Pakistan has provided dossiers containing evidence related to financial and administrative support provided to Baloch terrorists groups by India. Pakistan claims that Afghanistan during the Ashraf Ghani government was being used as launchpad for orchestrating anti Pakistan activities. However, these charges are denied by India.

On Friday, Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi also condemned the sponsors of these terrorists groups and said “we know who are behind these terrorist groups”.
Qureshi was apparently referring to India without naming it.

“[Pakistani] Nation need not to panic, in the past also our nation and army fought against these forces [terrorists] and defeated them and InshaAllah [God Willing} they will have to face the same fate in the future too,” Qureshi said in a statement.

Qureshi added that they know that some anti-peace forces are trying to play the role of spoilers here because they do not want economic stability in Pakistan.

The Baloch terrorist groups have also carried out attacks on Chinese engineers and Pakistani civilians who were working on multi-billion dollar China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which is being claimed as a game-changer project for the region while India continues to oppose it.

The $64 billion mega-project signed in 2014 aims to connect China's strategically important northwestern Xinjiang province to Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province, mainly Gwadar Port through a network of roads, railways and pipelines to transport cargo, oil and gas