ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistan’s prime minister on Tuesday approved a long-awaited “comprehensive military operation” against separatist groups in the restive southwest, more than a week after an outlaw group killed 26 people in a suicide bombing at a train station, officials said. .

The announcement from Shehbaz Sharif the launch of the operation “against terrorist organizations” operating in Balochistan came after a meeting of the government’s security committee in the capital Islamabad. On November 9, a suicide bomber with the banned Baloch Liberation Army blew himself up at a train station in Quetta, killed 26 people, mostly soldiers.

In a statement, Sharif’s office said the BLA and other groups would be targeted, but did not say when the operation would begin. The bureau blamed the groups for “targeting innocent civilians and foreign nationals to destroy Pakistan’s economic progress by creating insecurity at the behest of hostile external powers.”

In recent months, Balochistan and northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province have witnessed an increase in militant violence, most of which has been blamed on the banned groups BLA and TTP. The attack at the Quetta train station was the deadliest since August, when separatists killed more than 50 people in several coordinated attacks on passenger buses, police and security forces in Balochistan.

Balochistan, rich in oil and minerals, is the largest but also the least populated province of Pakistan. It is a hub for the country’s ethnicities Baloch minority whose members say they face discrimination and exploitation by central government.

The BLA mainly targets security forces and foreigners, especially Chinese nationals who are in Pakistan as part of Beijing’s multi-billion dollar. Belt and Road Initiative. The BLA wants all Chinese-funded projects stopped and Chinese workers to leave Pakistan to avoid further attacks.

Also on Tuesday, a suicide car bomb targeted a security post in Bannu, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, according to Irfan Kahn, a local police official. Kahn said gunshots were heard and ambulances arrived at the scene of the attack. He gave no other details and it was not immediately clear how many people were killed or injured in the attack.

The attack came a day after Pakistani security forces raided a militant hideout in the northwestern district of Tirah, triggering a firefight in which at least 10 insurgents were killed and several others wounded.

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Associated Press writer Riaz Khan contributed to this story from Peshawar, Pakistan.