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QUETTA, Pakistan: Six Pakistani paramilitary troops and a "big number" of separatist insurgents were killed in clashes in troubled south-western Pakistan at the weekend, a senior security official said Monday.
Security forces launched an operation against rebel camps in gas-rich Baluchistan province after a convoy of Frontier Corps soldiers came under attack on Saturday, the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Troops also arrested 30 militants and destroyed two insurgent bases used for plotting bomb attacks and other activities in the operation near Uch, a town in the restive Dera Bugti district of Baluchistan, the official said.
Impoverished Baluchistan, which borders Iran and Afghanistan, has seen a recent flare-up in attacks by ethnic Baluch tribes seeking more political rights and a greater share of profits from the region's natural resources.
"Six Frontier Corps men have been killed and around 30 militants have been arrested. Militants have been killed in a big number but I don't have the exact figure," the security official told AFP.
"The entire operation started after these militants fired on a Frontier Corps convoy the day before yesterday," added the official.
"There were two camps there of these militants, they were destroyed last night. The militants were using these two camps to destroy pylons, carry out bomb blasts and other terrorist activities."
Dera Bugti is near Pakistan's biggest natural gas field and was the base of late Baluch rebel leader Nawab Akbar Bugti, who was killed in a military operation in August 2006.
Hundreds of people have died in violence in the province since the insurgency flared in late 2004, but until recently it had quietened down after Bugti's death.
Pakistani officials have previously accused rival India of sponsoring the rebels, a charge that New Delhi denies.
- AFP/yb
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