QUETTA, Pakistan – More than 2,000 troops took control of one of Pakistan’s major natural gas plants and shut it down after renegade tribesmen fired hundreds of rockets, blowing up a pipeline and triggering clashes that have killed eight people in the last five days, officials said yesterday.

Tribesmen frequently target security forces and gas facilities to demand higher royalties from gas extracted from their territory, according to the government. Since Friday, attackers have fired 14,000 rounds of small arms fire, 435 mortars and up to 60 rockets at the plant in Sui, where about 22% of the natural gas supplied to Pakistan comes from, the interior minister, Aftab Khan Sherpao, told a news conference in Islamabad.

Soldiers were dispatched Tuesday after armed tribesmen stormed the gas plant and “started damaging it,” senior government official Abdul Samad Lasi said. About 2,000 soldiers took control of the plant and captured at least five suspected attackers.

“The situation is now under control, and more paramilitary forces are expected to arrive in Sui today,” Mr. Lasi said.

Mr. Sherpao said an army operation was not immediately planned in Sui, 220 miles southeast of Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province.

“As far as army action is concerned, it is for the provincial government. …If they have the matter under control the federal government will not intervene, but if they ask the federal government, then necessary steps would be taken,” Mr. Sherpao said.

Eight people, three of them security personnel, were killed and another 33 people, mostly civilians, were wounded in five days of shootouts between assailants and government forces, officials said.

Authorities had to shut a gas plant and suspend some supplies because of the damage caused to a pipeline, said an official with the Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Ltd., which operates the Sui gas field, Abdur Rasheed Lone. He said he hoped supplies would be restored within 24 hours.