QUETTA, Pakistan, Oct 12, (AP): Gunmen killed 21 miners and wounded six others in Pakistan’s southwest, a police official said Friday, drawing condemnation from authorities as a search was launched for the assailants. The latest attack in the restive Balochistan province came days ahead of a major security summit being hosted in the capital.

The gunmen stormed the accommodation at a coal mine in Duki district late Thursday night, rounded up the men and opened fire, police official Hamayun Khan Nasir said. He said the attackers also fired rockets, lobbed grenades at the mine and damaged machinery before fleeing. Most of the casualties were from Pashto-speaking areas of Balochistan.

Three of the dead and four of the wounded were Afghan. Angered over the violence, local shop owners pulled their shutters down to observe a daylong strike against the killings. One of the critically wounded miners died later at a hospital, increasing the death toll to 21, Nasir said. However, he said the families of the killed miners for hours refused to bury them and staged a sit-in at the site of the attack in Duki.

Under Islamic tradition, burials take place as quickly as possible after death, but the demonstrators before ending the protest insisted they would not hold funerals until authorities arrest the killers, Nasir said. No group claimed immediate responsibility for the attack, but suspicion is likely to fall on the outlawed Baloch Liberation Army, which targets civilians and security forces. The province is home to several separatist groups who want independence. They accuse the federal government in Islamabad of unfairly exploiting oil- and mineral-rich Balochistan at the expense of locals.