Militants attacked a Pakistan naval airbase killing at least one paramilitary soldier while security forces killed all five of the assailants in retaliatory fire, officials said on Tuesday.
Monday's attack on the Turbat base in southwestern Pakistan was the second assault by ethnic Baloch militants on a military facility in the past week.
"We escaped a huge loss," said a statement from Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif's office.
A Pakistan Navy spokesman said all five attackers were killed after they tried to break into the base.
One paramilitary soldier was also killed, said a military statement.
The Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), the most prominent of several separatist groups in Balochistan, claimed responsibility for the assault in a statement.
The BLA has previously been involved in attacks on Pakistani and Chinese interests in the region and elsewhere.
China has invested heavily in the mineral-rich southwestern province of Balochistan, which borders Afghanistan and Iran, including developing the port of Gwadar, despite a decades-long separatist insurgency.
Hours after the naval airbase attack, Pakistani security forces killed four insurgents in a raid on a militant hideout in the country’s northwest bordering Afghanistan, the military said.
Troops found a cache of weapons, ammunition, and explosives in the intelligence-based operation conducted at the hideout in Dera Ismail Khan, a district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, the military said in a statement.
