By Saleem Ahmad and Saud Mehsud
QUETTA, Pakistan (Reuters) -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.
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.
Officials said militants also targeted police and security stations in Balochistan, Pakistan's largest province by area but least populated, killing at least 10 people in one attack.
The Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) armed militant group took responsibility for the operation they called "Haruf" or "dark windy storm". In a statement to journalists they claimed more attacks over the last day that have not yet been confirmed by authorities.
The group said four suicide bombers, including a woman from the southern port district of Gwadar, had been involved in an attack on the Bela paramilitary base. Pakistani authorities did not confirm the suicide blasts, but the provincial chief minister said three people had been killed at the base.
The BLA is the biggest of several ethnic insurgent groups battling the central government, saying it unfairly exploits gas and mineral resources in the province, where poverty is rife. It wants the expulsion of China and independence for Balochistan.
Monday was the anniversary of the death of Baloch nationalist leader Akbar Bugti, who was killed by Pakistan's security forces in 2006.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif vowed that security forces would retaliate and bring those responsible to justice.
Bugti, the chief minister, said more intelligence-based operations would be launched to weed out militants. He hinted at curtailing mobile data services to stop militant coordination.
"They launch attacks, film it and then share it on social media for propaganda," he said.
General Li Qiaoming, commander of China's People's Liberation Army Ground Forces, and Pakistan's army chief Asim Munir met on Monday, though a Pakistani military statement released after the meeting made no mention of the attacks.
European Commission spokesperson Nabila Massrali said the EU condemned the attack.
PASSENGERS KILLED
On Sunday night, armed men blocked a highway, marched passengers off vehicles, and shot them after checking their identity cards, a senior superintendent of police, Ayub Achakzai, told Reuters.
As many as 35 vehicles were set on fire on the highway in the area of Musakhail.
"The armed men also not only killed passengers but also killed the drivers of trucks carrying coal," said Hameed Zahir, deputy commissioner of the area.
Militants have targeted workers from Pakistan's eastern province of Punjab whom they see as exploiting their resources.
In the past, they have also attacked Chinese interests and citizens in the province, where China runs the deepwater port of Gwadar, as well as a gold and copper mine in its west.
The BLA said its fighters targeted military personnel travelling in civilian clothes. Pakistan's interior ministry said the dead were innocent citizens.
Six security personnel, three civilians and one tribal elder made up the ten killed in clashes with armed militants who stormed a station of the Balochistan Levies in the central district of Kalat, police official Dostain Khan Dashti said.
Officials said police stations had also been attacked in two southern coastal towns, but the toll had yet to be confirmed.