Attack on gas field, rail track in Pakistan

Rockets fired by suspected insurgents damaged the water pumping station at the Pirkoh gas field, located some 370km southeast of Quetta, local administration chief Abdul Samad Lasi told AFP.

Pakistani forces shot dead 12 suspected tribal militants near the same gas field earlier this month after a roadside bomb blast killed three soldiers.

Tribesmen also bombed and damaged two main water supply lines which feed the gas field, Lasi said.

Meanwhile, Quetta police Saturday defused a three-kilo (6.6-pound) bomb planted at a main railway track just an hour before two passenger trains were due to pass, police official Khalid Garamkani told AFP.

"We have averted a major disaster and the early detection of a bomb planted on the track has saved the lives of passengers," Garamkani said.

Elsewhere, power was cut off to thousands of people when suspected rebels bombed a main electricity pylon near the town of Rakhni, some 400 kilometres southeast of Quetta, power company spokesman Gebrail Khan told AFP.

Nobody immediately claimed responsibility for the various attacks, but tribesmen demanding a bigger share of sparsely-populated Baluchistan's natural resources are waging an insurgency in the province.

They are demanding autonomy and oppose the setting-up of military garrisons.