On Wednesday night, unconfirmed tweets stated that oil reserves housed in Gwadar, a port city on the Balochistan coast, had purportedly been set on fire by Baloch separatists. According to reports, this unprecedented strike is likely to cause enormous damage. This strike also had a focus on Pakistan’s maritime resources. Large fire plumes suggest that there may have been multiple fatalities due to the incident. A large fire, however, was claimed to have started at the GwadarBalochistan diesel store in the evening by Minute Mirror, a Pakistan-based news website.
The Gwadar port’s entire diesel store was utterly destroyed by the fire, which started as a result of a generator short-circuit. The fire damaged more than 12 ships that were on the pier. It is yet uncertain what started the fire. Boats caught fire in the KuntaniHor section of the Jiwani district of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which runs through Gwadar. Videos of this incident have also surfaced on Twitter. Locals own the fire-damaged assets in the vicinity. The tweets indicated that although locals had notified the rescue squad, they had yet to arrive.
The Gwadar port, which China is building in Balochistan, was partially stopped by thousands of protesters last month. They said Pakistan’s government broke a deadline of November 20 regarding the ban on Chinese trawlers engaging in illegal fishing in the Arabian Sea, which is when the blockade was allegedly initiated. MaulanaHidayaturRehman of the renowned Haq Do Tehreek is in charge of the demonstrations. The protesters have previously called for the release of missing people, opening the border to commerce with Iran, and ending the drug trade that has harmed Baloch youth. They have also called for illegal fishing by Chinese trawlers to be stopped.