KARACHI, 16 January 2005 — Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) chief Altaf Hussain hinted that his ethnic-based party may quit Balochistan’s provincial government over the ongoing army operation in the tribal region of the state.

Addressing party workers over phone from London, Altaf said, “MQM is opposed to the military onslaught in Balochistan. The party’s Rabita Committee is taking stock of the situation and a final decision will be taken soon after its deliberations.”

Security forces have mounted a search for assailants who used rockets and mortars to attack a key gas field in southwestern Pakistan, threatening to disrupt supplies across the country, officials said yesterday.

Paramilitary troops were searching homes in villages around the gas field in Sui, a tribal town about 350 km southeast of Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan. No one has been arrested and no weapons have been seized in the operation that began on Friday, after suspected tribal assailants stopped firing rockets and mortars at the gas field.

In almost a week of attacks on the facility, officials have reported that at least eight people were killed, including civilians and soldiers, and 35 were injured.

Thousands of army and paramilitary troops have been deployed to guard the facility.

Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao said additional security forces will be deployed there. “Our basic objective is to secure the Sui plant so that such incidents do not happen in the future,” Sherpao told the Geo television channel.

Authorities shut supply from the gas field after a pipeline and a compressor plant there were damaged by a fire that was triggered by a rocket attack.

Pakistan Petroleum Ltd., the operator of the Sui gas field, said that the facility suffered more damage than initially estimated. It added some equipment has to be replaced and repair work will take some time before supply is restored.

Millions of Pakistani households face gas shortages as a result of the rocket attack. Supplies have been disrupted since Tuesday.

“We are facing acute shortage of gas supply and are forced to implement a 14-hour load management schedule for gas consumers in Sindh province,” said a spokesman for a gas distribution company, Sui Southern Gas Pipelines Ltd.

Under the program gas supply to residential areas in the port city of Karachi would be suspended for a certain period of time daily, spokesman Inayatullah Ismail said.

Similar cuts would affect other cities and towns in the province, he said.

The central province of Punjab was facing a shortage of 460 million cubic feet in its daily requirement of 1,650 million cubic feet, said Naeem Khan, spokesman for the distribution firm, Sui Northern Gas Pipeline Ltd.

“We have cut off gas supplies to big industrial units like fertilizers and power-houses in order to cope with the shortfall,” he said.

Meanwhile, authorities in Sindh province announced rationing of gas.

Ejaz Wasay, an official at the Sui Southern Gas Company Ltd., which supplies Sindh, said supplies to Karachi and other major cities in the province will be maintained from another plant. Supply to more than 50 industrial units, including six power generators, textile and cement factories, has been severed, he said.

Rocket attacks against gas fields are common in Baluchistan. The attacks are blamed on tribesmen who are accused of pressing demands for increase in royalties for resources extracted from their territory.

The trouble erupted in Sui after a woman doctor working at gas company hospital was gang-raped allegedly by security men early this month. Enraged by the alleged rape tribesman heavily rocketed the gas complex for several days. The tribesmen who have been fighting for years to win more royalties and better jobs from the gas-field insist the latest attacks were in revenge for the rape and lack of action against the culprits by the management.