QUETTA, 13 January 2005 — Authorities shut a Pakistan natural gas plant and more than 2,500 paramilitary forces and regular troops took control of it after renegade tribesmen fired hundreds of rockets, blowing up a gas pipeline and triggering a battle that left eight people dead, officials said yesterday.

The soldiers were dispatched to control the situation Tuesday after armed tribesmen stormed the gas plant in Sui, 350 km southeast of Quetta city, and “started damaging it,” said government official Abdul Samad Lasi.

Eight people, three of them security personnel, were killed and another 33 people, mostly civilians, were wounded in five days of shootouts between assailants and government forces, he said.

“The civilians suffered casualties when rockets fired by attackers hit their homes,” he said, adding that soldiers were patrolling Sui, and efforts were underway to arrest the assailants.

He said about 2,000 soldiers took control of the gas plant and other facilities and captured at least five suspected attackers. “The situation is now under control, and more paramilitary forces are expected to arrive in Sui today,” he said.

However, authorities had to shut a gas plant and suspend supplies to five industrial units because of the damage caused to a pipeline, said Abdur Rasheed Lone, an official with the Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Ltd., which operates the Sui gas field.

He hoped that the supplies would be restored within the next 24 hours.

Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao told Geo television that the assailants fired about 450 rockets targeting gas facilities in Sui, resulting in the plant’s closure.

Pakistan Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan said that troops were also being deployed in Sui.

“Our gas installations have national importance, and we are deploying troops in Sui to protect our facilities and the staff working there,” he said. However, he refused to elaborate on how many troops had been sent there, although another official said about 500 soldiers and “some helicopter gunships” had reached Sui, and more were on their way to the area.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, would not say whether any army operation was being considered against the attackers. “Such details cannot be shared with the media, but the troops are going to Sui to restore writ of the government,” he said.

Rocket attacks against gas fields are common in Baluchistan province, of which Quetta is the capital. But, the latest clashes between a little-known Baluchistan Liberation Force nationalist group and the security forces began last week after three men allegedly gang-raped a female doctor at a hospital owned by a state-run gas company.

The group has said the attack against the doctor violated their traditions.

The surge in attacks against gas facilities also came hours after President Pervez Musharraf, in an interview with private Geo TV, asked tribesmen to halt their activities.

“Don’t push us ... it is not 1970s, and this time you won’t even know what has hit you,” he said Tuesday, referring to a 1970s military crackdown on rebels in the region that left most of the separatists dead or captured.

“I warn them to stop targeting” the country’s gas facilities, he said. But his threat seemed to have little effect.

The government has said the tribesmen target security forces and gas facilities to pressure it to get higher royalties from gas extracted from their territory.