This archive report was first published on 29 June 2020.
June 29, 2020, marked a day of violence in Karachi, Pakistan, as gunmen attacked the Pakistan Stock Exchange, leaving at least six people dead.
According to police, the assailants opened fire and hurled a grenade at the trading floor, killing four security guards, a police officer, and a bystander. The attackers were also killed in the melee.
The Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) later claimed responsibility for the attack, stating that an elite unit of fighters had carried out the assault.
The BLA is one of several insurgent groups fighting primarily in Pakistan's southwestern Balochistan province, which has been plagued by separatist, Islamist, and sectarian violence for years.
The group has targeted infrastructure projects and Chinese workers in Pakistan multiple times in recent years, including a brazen daylight attack on the Chinese consulate in Karachi in 2018.
Monday's attack comes a week after a grenade was thrown at a line of people waiting outside a government welfare office in the city, killing one and injuring eight others.
