Separatist suicide attack in southwestern Pakistan kills at least five

By Saleem Ahmed and Saud Mehsud

QUETTA (Reuters) - Separatist militants drove a vehicle laden with explosives into a paramilitary convoy, killing at least five in southwestern Pakistan, officials said on Sunday, just days after the same group hijacked a train and held hostages for 36 hours.

The Baloch Liberation Army claimed responsibility for the attack in the district of Noshki in the restive province of Balochistan.

Senior Superintendent of Police for Noskhi district Hashim Momand said more than 30 paramilitary force members were also wounded.

Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif in a statement condemned the attack, which came as Pakistan deals with a growing security crisis in its regions bordering Afghanistan.

The BLA on Tuesday took over the Jaffar Express in a remote mountain pass in Balochistan province, blowing up train tracks in an attack that killed 31 soldiers and civilians, the military said.

In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which lies to the north of Balochistan and also shares a border with Afghanistan, the provincial chief minister Ali Amin Gandapur condemned a series of attacks on police across the province.

He did not provide casualty numbers, but the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) Islamist militant group said there had been 16 attacks in the past 24 hours.

Pakistan's authorities have vowed to crack down on the growing insurgencies and said they are fuelled in part by militants finding safe haven in Afghanistan, a charge the ruling Afghan Taliban deny. Militant attacks often pick up in the warmer spring period as the cold winter months recede in mountainous border regions.

(Reporting by Saleem Ahmed in Quetta and Saud Mehsud in Dera Ismial Khan; Writing by Charlotte Greenfield; Editing by Saad Sayeed)