ISLAMABAD: The United States has designated a Baloch separatist group as a foreign terrorist organization, the State Department said, a move hailed Tuesday by Pakistani officials.<\/p>\n
The designation of the Balochistan Liberation Army and its fighting wing, the Majeed Brigade, blamed for deadly attacks in insurgency-hit Balochistan province, coincides with the visit of Pakistan\u2019s army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, to the US<\/p>\n
It also comes less than two weeks after Washington and Islamabad reached a trade agreement expected to allow American firms to help develop Pakistan\u2019s largely untapped oil reserves in resource-rich Balochistan and to lower trade tariffs for Islamabad.<\/p>\n
In a statement, the State Department said it is \u201cdesignating the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) and its alias, the Majeed Brigade, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), and adding the Majeed Brigade as an alias to BLA\u2019s previous Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) designation.\u201d<\/p>\n
The BLA was first designated an SDGT in 2019 after several terrorist attacks. The US statement said that, since then, both the group and the Majeed Brigade have claimed responsibility for additional attacks.<\/p>\n
It also said that in 2024, the BLA claimed responsibility for suicide bombings near the airport in Karachi and in the port city of Gwadar in Balochistan.<\/p>\n
In 2025, the group said it carried out the hijacking of the Jaffar Express train traveling from Quetta to Peshawar, killing 31 civilians and security personnel and holding more than 300 passengers hostage, according to the US State Department.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday\u2019s action taken by the Department of State demonstrates the Trump administration\u2019s commitment to countering terrorism,\u201d the US statement said.<\/p>\n
There was no immediate comment from Balochistan nationalists and separatist groups. Balochistan has long been the scene of insurgency, mostly blamed on groups including the key outlawed Baloch Liberation Army, which the US designated a terrorist organization in 2019. The province is also home to militants linked to the Pakistani Taliban.<\/p>\n
Separatists in Balochistan have opposed the extraction of resources by Pakistani and foreign firms and have targeted Pakistani security forces and Chinese nationals working on multibillion-dollar projects related to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ISLAMABAD: The United States has designated a Baloch separatist group as a foreign terrorist organization, the State Department said, a move hailed Tuesday by Pakistani officials. The designation of the Balochistan Liberation Army and its fighting wing, the Majeed Brigade, blamed for deadly attacks in insurgency-hit Balochistan province, coincides with the visit of Pakistan\u2019s army …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":85314,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85313"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85315,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85313\/revisions\/85315"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}