QUETTA: At least five people were killed and dozens wounded in a suspected suicide attack on a predominantly Shia Hazara neighbourhood of the volatile Pakistani city of Quetta yesterday, police said.
No one immediately claimed responsibility.
Last year, members of Quetta’s Hazara community, an ethnic minority in predominantly Sunni Pakistan, staged a sit-in in protest at their lack of protection, refusing to bury the bodies of people killed in a bomb blast in a Shia commercial area of the city.
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a radical Sunni Pakistani militant group, has carried out many gun and bomb attacks on Quetta’s Hazaras in the past.
The latest attack took place outside a local high school, police said, on the Muslim festival of Eid Al Adha. The explosion reverberated across the city.
“The dead included two women who came for Eid shopping,” said Quetta police chief Abdul Razzak Cheema.
“In total, five people were killed and 27 people, including two women, were wounded.”
Meanwhile, a huge roadside bomb explosion in Pakistan’s southwestern Baluchistan province wounded at least seven people yesterday, security officials said.
Planted in a car parked by the side of the road, the bomb went off in a suburb of the city of Quetta as police officer’s vehicle was passing. Officials said it was unclear whether he was intended the target.
“The bomb was planted in a car in a relatively deserted location on Spini Road. It exploded just after a police deputy superintendent passed,” Cheema said.
“Seven people who got injured in the blast were taken to hospital,” Cheema added.
Bomb disposal experts said a remote control was used in the blast.
“A planted device was used for the explosion which was detonated by remote control. Up to 40 kilogrammes of explosives were used in the blast,” said bomb disposal chief Commander Abdul Razzak. “Luckily the area was not that crowded. This huge quantity of explosives could have killed many people if exploded in a busy area,” he said.
No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack but Islamic sectarian militants and Baluch separatists are active in the area and often attack minority Shia Muslims as well as government forces and installations.
Resource-rich Baluchistan is home to a long-running separatist conflict that was revived in 2004, with nationalists seeking to stop what they see as the exploitation of the region’s natural resources and alleged rights abuses.
Agencies
