8 Pak soldiers, 40 tribals killed in troubled region

The tribals, including women and children, were killed during the clash with security forces in the restive province, a tribal chief has claimed.

Leaders of an alliance of four Baloch nationalist groups Thursday staged a protest demonstration in the provincial capital Quetta against the attack on the tribals.

They claimed over 40 Bugti tribesmen including women and children had been killed in the attack and called for a seven-day mourning period from yesterday for the victims.

A ceasefire was agreed to remove the dead and wounded from the site of the day-long exchange of machinegun fire in Dera Bugti southeast of the provincial capital Quetta, officials said.

"The ceasefire is still holding," head of the Interior Ministry's National Crisis Management Cell, Brigadier Javed Cheema, told AFP yesterday.

Fighting broke out Thursday after the heavily-armed renegade clansmen, who want more autonomy and increased benefits from the area's natural resources, ambushed paramilitary Frontier Corps soldiers.

They struck as a six-vehicle military convoy containing 40 personnel was moving towards Pakistan's largest gasfield at nearby Sui -- the site of fierce clashes at the start of the year.

Cheema said the attack, which he blamed on the area's dominant Bugti tribe, was "totally unprovoked and blatant aggression".

Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao said tribesmen used light and heavy weapons and rained more than 150 rockets and mortar shells on a nearby paramilitary base from 12 different directions.

Officials said regular army troops backed by two military helicopters had been sent to tackle the situation.

An assertion by opposition politician Hafiz Hussain Ahmed that up to 50 tribesmen were killed in the incident was "exaggerated," Sherpao and Cheema said.

Tribal representatives and the clan's chieftain Akbar Bugti gave similar figures for the number of dead on their side.