Separatists kill 21 including civilians in multiple attacks in Pakistan

QUETTA, Pakistan (AP) — Separatists from Pakistan's Balochistan province claimed responsibility for nearly a dozen coordinated attacks across southern Pakistan early Saturday that targeted civilians, a high-security prison, police stations and paramilitary installations. Eleven civilians, 10 security personnel and 67 insurgents were killed, authorities said.

Though Baloch separatists and the Pakistani Taliban frequently target security forces in Balochistan and elsewhere in the country, coordinated attacks on this scale are rare. Authorities said at least 108 militants have been killed across Balochistan over the past 48 hours, including 67 on Saturday. Analysts said it was the deadliest single day for militants in decades.

The dead included 11 civilians, among them three women and three children, in the city of Gwadar in Balochistan, police official Ibad Khan said. He said the dead civilians were ethnic Baloch. Khan said police quickly responded to the attack and killed all the attackers.

Pakistan’s Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi said in a statement that 10 security officers were killed.

The outlawed Baloch Liberation Army, or BLA, claimed responsibility for the attacks, during which some of the banks were robbed and a police station and dozens of vehicles torched. The BLA released videos showing female fighters taking part in the attacks, apparently part of a propaganda to highlight the role of women among the militants.

Shahid Rind, a spokesman for the Balochistan government, said most of the attacks were foiled. They came a day after the military said security forces this week raided two militant hideouts in the country’s southwest, killing 41 insurgents in separate gunbattles.

The provincial chief minister, Sarfraz Bugti, wrote on X that security forces were chasing the insurgents. He said at least 700 insurgents were killed by security forces in the past year.

According to Balochistan police and government officials, at least 37 assailants were killed initially and 30 more were traced and shot dead. Earlier Saturday, authorities said that insurgents destroyed rail tracks, prompting Pakistan Railways to suspend train services from Balochistan to other parts of the country.

The attacks began almost simultaneously across the province, provincial Health Minister Bakht Muhammad Kakar said. He said two police officers were killed in a grenade attack on a police vehicle in Quetta, the provincial capital. The government declared an emergency at all hospitals.

Dozens of insurgents also attacked a prison in Mastung district, freeing more than 30 inmates, police said. In other attacks, militants attempted to storm the provincial headquarters of paramilitary forces in Nushki district, but the attack was repelled, police said.

Insurgents hurled grenades at the office of a government administrator in Dalbandin district, but a swift response by security forces forced them to flee, according to local authorities. Attacks on security posts in Balincha, Tump and Kharan districts were thwarted, while in Pasni and Gwadar, insurgents attempted to abduct passengers traveling on buses along highways, police said.

The BLA is banned in Pakistan and designated a terrorist organization by the United States. It has been behind numerous attacks in recent years, and Pakistan says the group enjoys the backing from India, a charge New Delhi denies. Pakistan has repeatedly said that Baloch separatists, the Pakistani Taliban and other militants are using Afghan soil to launch attacks inside Pakistan. Kabul denies the claim.

Abdullah Khan, managing director of the Islamabad-based Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies, told The Associated Press that the “terrorists linked to BLA or other groups had never before been killed in such a large number in a single day” in Balochistan.

Baloch separatist groups and the Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, have intensified attacks in Pakistan in recent months. The TTP is a separate group but allied with Afghanistan’s Taliban, who returned to power in August 2021.

Balochistan has long been the site of an insurgency by separatist groups seeking independence from Pakistan’s central government in Islamabad.

Ahmed reported from Islamabad. Associated Press writers Babar Dogar in Lahore, Pakistan, and Ishtiaq Mahsud in Dera Ismail Khan, Pakistan, contributed to this report.

Injured victims of militants attack are treated at an hospital in Quetta, Pakistan, Saturday, Jan. 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Arshad Butt)

Relatives of police officers who were killed in a militants attack, mourn outside a hospital in Quetta, Pakistan, Saturday, Jan. 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Arshad Butt)

Hospital workers transport a body of a police officer who was killed in a militants attack, at a hospital in Quetta, Pakistan, Saturday, Jan. 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Arshad Butt)

Hospital workers transport a body of a police officer who was killed in a militants attack, outside a hospital in Quetta, Pakistan, Saturday, Jan. 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Arshad Butt)

Pakistani army soldiers and other security officials examine a site following militants attack with guns and grenades, in Quetta, Pakistan, Saturday, Jan. 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Arshad Butt)

Pakistani army soldiers and other security officials examine a site following militants attack with guns and grenades, in Quetta, Pakistan, Saturday, Jan. 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Arshad Butt)

Pakistani army soldiers and other security officials examine a site following militants attack with guns and grenades, in Quetta, Pakistan, Saturday, Jan. 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Arshad Butt)

CAIRO (AP) — Iranians began to regain internet access on Wednesday after authorities ended a monthslong shutdown. But users said service was slow and spotty in some areas, with apps like YouTube and Instagram heavily restricted, as they were before the cutoff began during nationwide protests in January.

Authorities justified the outage as a military imperative after the United States and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28. Their decision to lift some restrictions this week came as negotiators appeared to be closing in on a more permanent truce. But many Iranians feared access could be cut off again at a moment's notice.

Internet tracking company Netblocks said Iran’s connectivity, which measures the ability of devices to connect to the internet, is at around 86% of capacity from before the cutoff. Internet analysis firm Kentik said internet traffic, which measures the amount of data transferred and is a good illustration of usage, was at around 40%.

Amir Rashidi, an Iranian cybersecurity analyst, said there were still widespread disruptions. “It's too early to say the shutdown is over,” he wrote on X.

Iran’s roughly 90 million people have been cut off from the internet for most of 2026, one of the world’s longest and strictest national shutdowns. Young people with online careers saw their incomes evaporate. Job losses and the closure of online businesses added to the war's steep economic costs.

The cutoff made it difficult for Iranian families to communicate through months of unrest and war. At some points, phone lines were also cut off, though they were later restored.

A woman living in Tehran said that for months she was barely able to speak to her sons living abroad. She couldn't believe authorities had restored access, saying she had assumed they would find some justification to prolong the outage.

A taxi driver said service was restored but weak. He expressed hope it would improve so he could use messaging apps with family and friends. Both spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

Prices spiked during the shutdown, with residents in Tehran at times paying around $7.50 per gigabyte. Prices are back down to around $2.25 for 30 gigabytes, roughly where they were before the protests.

Even then, Iran tightly controlled access to popular social media sites, leading many to rely on virtual private networks, or VPNs. The cost of those workarounds soared during the shutdown, making them unaffordable for many as the economy was battered.

Businesses have started reappearing online, announcing their return with posts on sites like Instagram and Telegram.

A gamer and tech influencer in the central city of Isfahan said the shutdown had caused him to lose a lot of his audience on YouTube and Instagram, where he had spent years building up a large following.

“All my views and interactions are way down. I’ve been erased from the algorithm,” he said in a voice note sent by WhatsApp, adding that his internet connection was still slower than before the shutdown.

“The situation is such that many content producers have had their income reduced to zero, have moved on to other jobs, or have been forced to sell their equipment to survive,” he said. He spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.

Iranian authorities first shut down the internet in January during mass anti-government protests that were eventually stamped out in a violent crackdown. Thousands of people were killed and tens of thousands detained.

That cutoff was just starting to ease when the government imposed a complete internet blackout after the start of the war, when U.S. and Israeli strikes killed Iran's supreme leader and other top officials.

The government faced criticism for the prolonged shutdown, which caused even more harm to an economy devastated by inflation, strikes on key industries and a U.S. blockade on Iranian ports.

The internet cutoff cost an estimated $30-40 million daily, with indirect losses likely twice that much, a member of Iran’s Chamber of Commerce, Afshin Kolahi, told a local newspaper last month. About 10 million people have jobs that depend on internet connectivity, according to Communications Minister Sattar Hashemi.

Iranians still had access to a national net, but that has a far narrower reach, and users complained of poor service and heavy censorship. Senior government officials are given SIM cards granting them access to the global internet. Under pressure, the government expanded access to the SIM cards to some professions during the shutdown.

A woman checks her smartphone while sitting on a bench along a sidewalk in northern Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, May 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)