Pakistani crackdown seen sparking Baluch backlash

QUETTA, Pakistan, Feb 8 (Reuters) - Tribal rebels are suspected of planting a bomb last Sunday that killed 13 people on a bus, in retaliation for an ongoing army operation against them in southwestern Pakistan, a provincial police chief told Reuters.

The security situation in Baluchistan, the most westerly of Pakistan's four provinces, has been deteriorating for the past year, and worsened further after a rocket attack in December during a visit by President Pervez Musharraf to Kohlu town.

Baluch nationalists say hundreds of people have been killed during a subsequent crackdown said to have involved helicopter gunships, though analysts say this could be an exaggeration.

Police chief Chaudhary Mohammad Yaqoob told Reuters in the provincial capital Quetta that militant camps had been destroyed, but more were being established across the border in Iran, although it is on the opposite side of the province from where the tribes suspected of causing most trouble operate.

"We have destroyed over a dozen of their camps inside Pakistan, but we have information that they have set up two new camps in the hills on Iranian territory," he said.

"We will soon inform the Iranian government."

"TARGETING PUNJABIS"

Sunday's bus bomb, if it was carried out by tribals, would mark a change in tactics, as previously rebels have targeted military bases, train lines and gas pipelines as part of their long-running, low-level insurgency. Yaqoob said 25 suspects had been detained in an investigation focused on supporters of Nawab Akbar Bugti, a tribal chieftain who wants the government to pay more for exploiting gas fields in his area.

"We are interrogating them, and we have evidence that they have carried out the attack," Yaqoob said on Wednesday.

Photographs of Bugti outside a cave hideout were published in Pakistani newspapers last month. Yaqoob said Bugti's group has forged links with the Baluch Liberation Army (BLA), whose fighters are drawn from the Marri tribe based around Kohlu.

Bugti, a former chief minister and governor of Baluchistan, has in the past denied any links with the BLA.

Baluchistan makes up more than 43 percent of Pakistan's total land area, but only accounts for close to five percent of its people.

Baluchs complain of a lack of political representation and resent their land's resources being used to benefit Pakistan's other provinces, most notably Punjab.

"The (bus) attack was a fallout from the ongoing operation in Dera Bugti. They are desperate and they are targeting people belonging to Punjab," said Yaqoob.

The bus, bound for the Punjabi city of Lahore, had travelled 60 km (38 miles) from Quetta when the bomb exploded.

Eight more people were killed last weekend in rocket attacks around Dera Bugti and Sui, 290 km (180 miles) southeast of Quetta. Sui gas field produces 45 percent of Pakistan's gas.

An Indian official last month urged the Pakistan Army to use restraint in Baluchistan, whereupon Islamabad accused India of funding the rebels, which India denies.

On Monday, Baluchistan Governor Ovais Ahmad Ghani repeated the accusation against India, but added that the rebels were being armed by Afghan warlords and drug barons.

Baluchistan's political equation has been further complicated by an influx of Taliban fighters, who fled Afghanistan after U.S.-led forces overthrew a Taliban government in late 2001.