Twenty-six people travelling to a wedding in southwest Pakistan were killed on Friday when their vehicle hit a landmine near the country's main natural gas fields.

The blast happened in Dera Bugti district of Baluchistan Province. Authorities blamed autonomy-seeking militants for planting the mine.

"This attack was carried out by the same people who fire rockets, carry out bomb blasts and attack security forces," the chief minister of Baluchistan, Jam Mohammad Yousaf, told reporters in the provincial capital, Quetta.

Twenty of the 26 dead were women and children, he said.

Baluch militants have waged a low-level insurgency for greater control over gas and other resources for decades, but have intensified attacks on government installations and infrastructure, including gas pipelines, over the past year.

The wedding party was travelling on a trailer being pulled by a tractor. Militants were known to have planted mines in the area and security forces had been trying to clear them, a provincial spokesman said.

The violence in the province, which borders Afghanistan and Iran, is another pressing security problem for Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, whose forces are also battling Islamist militants in tribal areas on the Afghan border to the north of Baluchistan.

Latest crackdown

The military launched its latest crackdown on Baluch rebels after a rocket attack on December 14 while Musharraf was visiting the area.

Baluch nationalists say hundreds of people have been killed, but analysts say that could be an exaggeration.

The government recently accused India and Afghan drug lords of meddling in Baluchistan.

In earlier attacks, two people were killed and about a dozen wounded in three landmine blasts in another district on Thursday, officials said.

Militants also fired at least 16 rockets at security posts in several different areas on Thursday night but no casualties were reported, officials said.

A police officer and his daughter were killed when someone threw a grenade into their house in Quetta on Thursday night, police said.

Source: China Daily