Terror attack in Pakistan kills five people.

Zaver Pearl-Continental Hotel in Gwadar. BBC/Reuters.

A terror attack in Gwadar, Pakistan targeting a luxury hotel has killed 5 people. BBC. The attack killed three hotel workers, a security guard and a solider and six others were wounded in the attack. Three attackers were killed as well. The Balochistan Liberation Army, a separatist group, took credit for the attack. They disprove of the hotel as it is funded by the Chinese and other foreign investors. The goal of the attack was to take hotel guests hostage but due to the Ramadan holiday, there were not many guests at the hotel at the time. The three attackers had also placed IED's but were shot and killed before they could use them. 

My Comment:

An odd attack for sure. It's somewhat surprising to see a terror attack in Pakistan for secular and not religious reasons, but by all accounts The Balochistan Liberation Army is a non-religious group. They are of course Muslim, but it's not their religion that inspired this attack. 

The attack seemed pretty poorly planned. It's Ramadan right now so many Muslims are not on vacation. That means this hotel was mostly empty and there weren't many hostages to take. And they never were able to find any hostages in the first place. They might have done better to just use the hotel workers as hostages but they shot them instead. 

It seems as though the Pakistani security forces did a good job at stopping this attack. It sounds like they were on site relatively quickly and prevented this from being a much worse attack. It's unclear what the IED's were as they could have been trying to blow up the hotel or may have just been trying to booby trap it, but either way stopping them before they could activate them is a very good thing. 

I also think that we are going to see more of these kinds of attacks, in particular those targeting the Chinese. China has been throwing their weight around globally and have tried to expand their economic influence. They have been on a building spree internationally and sooner or later someone was going to have a problem with it. It's possible that more attacks like this could happen in the future as China grows in power and influence.