Quetta, Pakistan: Ethnic Baloch separatists launched "coordinated" attacks across Pakistan's Balochistan province on Saturday, killing at least four policemen, officials said, the latest violence in insurgency-hit southwest region. 

"The coordinated gun and suicide attacks are being carried out across Balochistan, mainly in Quetta, Pasni, Mastung, Nushki and Gwadar districts," a senior security official based in the provincial capital of Quetta told AFP. 

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Balochistan, which shares a big border with Afghanistan, has long been the site of an insurgency by separatist groups seeking independence from Pakistan’s central government in Islamabad. The province has also seen attacks by the Pakistani Taliban and the outlawed Baloch Liberation Army and other groups, including the Islamic State group.

Though officials say the insurgency has been largely contained, violence has continued in Balochistan.

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Pakistan has seen a surge in militant violence in recent months, largely blamed on Baloch separatist groups and the Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, which is a separate group but is allied with Afghanistan’s Taliban, who returned to power in August 2021.

In its annual report issued earlier this month, the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC) said Balochistan had effectively become a "huge prison" and an "even larger death cell." The group recorded 1,223 enforced disappearances by the Pakistani government in 2025, of which 348 individuals were released while 832 remain missing, including 75 minors and 18 women. The BYC also documented 188 extrajudicial killings during the year, including 75 people it said were killed under what it described as the state's long-standing "kill and dump" policy, as cited by the TBP report.