Kalat: 23 freed and 5 militants killed at a fake checkpost on the N-25

Security forces killed five militants and recovered 23 people who had been taken hostage on the N-25 highway near Kalat in Balochistan, the Inter-Services Public Relations said in a statement carried on Sunday.

The armed men had set up their own checkpost on the highway. ISPR says they were stopping vehicles to abduct passengers, extort money and seize the vehicles themselves. All 23 hostages were recovered safely. No casualties among the security forces were reported.

What was recovered

Along with the 23 people, forces recovered 11 vehicles that the group had taken off the road:

• 6 trucks
• 3 buses
• 2 cars

Weapons, ammunition and explosives were also seized at the site. The operation was carried out under Operation Raddul Fitna 3, the campaign the military has been running against militants across Balochistan.

Why the N-25 matters

The N-25 is the RCD highway. It is the road link from Karachi up through Bela, Khuzdar and Kalat to Quetta, and on to Chaman. It carries the trucks that move freight between the Karachi ports and Balochistan, and the buses that carry passengers on a route with long stretches where there is nothing between towns.

That is exactly what makes the fake checkpost tactic work. A single group with rifles can stop a line of traffic on an empty stretch, and drivers have no way of telling a real check from a staged one until they are already stopped.

Attacks of this type on the N-25 and the N-70 have repeatedly hit inter-city buses and goods traffic over the past two years. Each one raises the cost of moving anything through Balochistan, because freight operators price in the delay and the risk.

What this means if you travel that road

If you are driving or sending freight on the Karachi to Quetta route, the practical points are unchanged after Sunday's operation:

• Travel the Bela to Kalat stretch in daylight where you can. Most of these incidents happen at night or in the early morning.
• Inter-city bus operators on the route adjust departure times when there is an alert. Confirm the departure with the terminal rather than assuming the printed timing holds.
• Keep the National Highways and Motorway Police helpline 130 saved. It covers the N-25.

Fuel is the other cost on this route, and it is a long one. Petrol is at Rs 389.14 a litre and diesel at Rs 424.04, so a Karachi to Quetta run of roughly 690 km in a car doing 12 km a litre costs about Rs 22,400 in petrol one way. You can work out your own vehicle on our fuel cost calculator, and the current pump prices are on the petrol price page.

The wider picture

Balochistan has seen a sustained run of operations this year. ISPR has been publishing a steady stream of clearance statements from Kalat, Khuzdar, Awaran and Kech districts. The Kalat action comes days after the attack on the Police Lines in Kohat, in which 22 people were killed and eight attackers were killed in the clearance operation that followed.