73 dead after militant attacks in Pakistan`s Balochistan

At least 73 people were killed in Pakistan's province of Balochistan when separatist militants attacked police stations, railway lines and highways and security forces launched retaliatory operations, officials said on Monday, reports reuters.

The assaults were the most widespread in years by ethnic militants fighting a decades-long insurgency to win secession of the resource-rich southwestern province, home to major China-led projects such as a port and a gold and copper mine.

"These attacks are a well thought-out plan to create anarchy in Pakistan," Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi said in a statement.

Pakistan's military said 14 soldiers and police and 21 militants were killed in fighting after the largest of the attacks, which targeted buses and trucks on a major highway.

Balochistan's chief minister said 38 civilians were also killed. Local officials said 23 of them were killed in the roadside attack after armed men checked passengers' IDs before shooting many of them and torching vehicles.

"People were taken off buses and killed in front of their families," Chief Minister Sarfraz Bugti said in a televised press conference.

Rail traffic with Quetta was suspended following blasts on a rail bridge linking the provincial capital to the rest of Pakistan. Militants also struck a rail link to neighbouring Iran, railways official Muhammad Kashif said.

Police said they had found six as yet unidentified bodies near the site of the attack on the railway bridge._Agencies.