The site of bombing in Balochistan, December 2013. Banaras Khan—AFP
City police chief says improvised explosive device was targeting the Frontier Corps.
A bomb blast targeting a vehicle carrying security forces killed a young girl and wounded 16 others—including up to eight children—on the outskirts of Quetta on Saturday, police said.
The attack occurred in the Saryab area near Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province. “An improvised explosive device, which was planted in an auto rickshaw parked along the roadside went off as a vehicle of paramilitary Frontier Corps (FC) passed by it,” said city police chief Abdul Razzaq Cheema.
He said a girl was killed and 16 others were injured, three of them seriously. The wounded included up to eight children, he added, without giving ages. Senior police official Imran Qureshi confirmed the attack.
Nobody has so far claimed responsibility but Quetta and other cities of Balochistan are rife with separatist and Islamist militants and plagued by sectarian bloodshed. Quetta has been hit by numerous attacks in recent years, including two devastating bombings in early 2013, which targeted Shia Muslims and killed nearly 180 people.