QUETTA, Pakistan (Reuters) - A Baluch insurgent group on Thursday claimed responsibility for killing 14 people in southwest Pakistan, it said in a statement emailed to reporters and newspaper offices.

Unidentified gunmen killed 14 people they had kidnapped after pulling them off buses in the energy- and mineral-rich province of Baluchistan, long riven by violence and a stubborn insurgency by separatist groups and Islamist militants.

Fighters of Baloch Raji Aajoi Saangar carried out the killings, said the body, which described itself as an umbrella group of three Baluch separatist movements in the region, but denied that ordinary passengers had been targeted.

“Those who were targeted carried cards of the Pakistan Navy and Coast Guards, and they were only killed after they were identified,” the group’s spokesman, Baluch Khan, said in the statement.