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4 killed as militants storm Pakistani luxury hotel

KARACHI, May 11, 2019

Three heavily-armed militants on Saturday stormed a luxury hotel in Pakistan's port city of Gwadar in the restive Balochistan province, leading to a fierce gunbattle in which four persons including the attackers were killed, said media reports.
 
The armed men entered the upscale Pearl Continental (PC) Hotel and opened random firing, reported BBC citing a senior police official.
 
Local media said the fighters stormed the Pearl Continental hotel in Gwadar just before 5pm local time on Saturday. Firing was still ongoing at 8pm, the assistant superintendent of police in the city said. Security personnel cordoned off the area around the hotel, it stated.
 
A spokesman for Pakistan’s military said a hotel security guard had been killed.
 
“All four of the terrorists have been killed,” said a senior security official told the Associated Press. Security forces cornered the attackers in a staircase during the hours-long gunfight, the military said in its statement.
 
Responsibility for the attack was claimed on Twitter by members of the Majeed Brigade of the Balochistan Liberation Organisation, a separatist group active in Pakistan and Afghanistan. “Our fighters have carried out this attack on Chinese and other foreign investors,” the group said.
 
The same group claimed responsibility for an attack on the Chinese embassy in Karachi in November last year and another assault on Chinese engineers in the Baloch district of Chagai.
 
Gwadar, a small city in Balochistan province, is the site of a large port under construction by a Chinese company as part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a centrepiece project of China’s Belt and Road infrastructure-building spree.
 
Beijing has invested about $50 billion in the port and in road links between Gwadar and China’s western Xinjiang province.
 
The city of Gwadar, including its major hotels, is heavily guarded by the Pakistan army and paramilitary forces, it added.
 



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