Pakistani forces kill all militants involved in Gwadar attack

All the three attackers who stormed a five-star hotel in the restive Pakistani province of Balochistan on Saturday have been killed by security forces, military sources have announced.

The military confirmed in a statement on Sunday that the three gunmen had been killed in an eight-hour gunfight with security forces inside the Pearl Continental Hotel in the southwestern city of Gwadar on Saturday.

“Security forces have completed clearance operation,” the statement read.

The law enforcement forces entered the hotel and took part in a gun battle with the militants before cornering them in a staircase leading to the top floor, the military added. During the operation to clear the hotel, the forces also had to defuse explosive devices left behind by the attackers.

The military said that all guests at the hotel were safely evacuated.

The number of attackers had initially been reported four.

Elsewhere in the statement, the military said the attackers disabled CCTV cameras in the hotel and planted explosives at all access points leading to the top floor.

Gwadar resident Abdur Rahim Baloch told Reuters that intermittent firing could still be heard from the hotel on Sunday afternoon.

 At least three security guards, one member of the hotel personnel, and a navy soldier were killed and six were wounded as the assailants battled members of the security forces.

Responsibility for the attack was claimed by a separatist group in Pakistan’s poorest province of Balochistan.

The hotel, located on a hillside near the port, is used by foreign guests, including Chinese nationals, but there were none in the building at the time of the attack.

Security across most of Pakistan has been tightened over recent years in a major crackdown after the country’s worst attack, in which some 150 people, most of them children, were killed at a school in the western city of Peshawar in 2014.

But Balochistan, also Pakistan’s largest province, remains an exception and there have been several attacks this year, with at least 14 people killed last month in an attack on buses traveling between the southern city of Karachi and Gwadar.