Pakistani security officials inspect a university bus after a bomb explosion in Quetta, the provincial capital of restive Baluchistan province, yesterday.
QUETTA: At least 25 people were killed in southwest Pakistan yesterday when militants blew up a bus carrying women students and attacked a hospital treating survivors, officials said.
The bomb attack on a bus in Quetta, capital of the restive Baluchistan province, killed 14 women students, and another 11 people died in a blast at a city hospital around 90 minutes later.
The second attack hit the emergency ward of the city’s Bolan Medical Complex where the wounded were taken and was followed by a gun battle with militants holed up inside the hospital.
The stand-off lasted for several hours and ended when security forces stormed the building, freeing 35 people who had been taken hostage, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar told reporters.
Quetta was the scene of two of the bloodiest attacks in Pakistan this year, both targeting Shia Muslims, and the student victims were members of a women’s university popular with the minority community.
Nisar said the bus bomb killed 14 students and wounded 19.
“As casualties were being brought to the hospital terrorists had taken position inside the hospital building,” he told reporters.
“They opened fire on administration and police officials who arrived at the hospital. One suicide bomber blew himself up in the hospital.”
Nisar said he was unable to give exact casualty figures for the hospital attack, but Abdul Wasey, spokesman for the paramilitary Frontier Corps earlier said 11 were killed and 17 wounded in the bombing.
No group claimed responsibility for the attacks but Quetta is a focal point for sectarian violence between majority Sunni Muslims and minority Shias, who account for 20 percent of Pakistan’s 180 million population.
The bus targeted in yesterday’s attack was from Sardar Bahadur Khan Women’s University, which is located close to a Shia Hazara neighbourhood in Quetta, and many Hazaras are students.
Baluchistan, bordering Iran and Afghanistan, is rife with Islamist militancy and a regional insurgency waged by separatists demanding political autonomy.
AFP
