At least six people, including four schoolchildren, were killed when a bomb hit a school bus in Pakistan’s restive southwestern Balochistan Province on Wednesday morning, officials said, the latest outbreak of violence in a region plagued by separatist insurgency and militancy.
Sarfraz Bugti, Balochistan’s chief minister, said that, as well as the four students, the bus driver and a helper had been killed in the attack and that several others had been wounded.
“Forty-six students were on board the bus when it was targeted with a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device,” Mr. Bugti said during a news conference in the city of Quetta.
He added that militant groups had been deliberately zeroing in on easier targets, such as children, over the past several months.
The attack took place in the Khuzdar district, about 180 miles south of Quetta, the provincial capital of Balochistan, along the main highway connecting Quetta and Karachi, the capital of Sindh Province.
The school bus was transporting students from various areas to a military-run school in a high-security cantonment, according to officials.
“The explosion occurred as the school bus was passing through the area,” said Yasir Iqbal Dashti, a senior district official, adding, “The bodies of the deceased and the injured have been shifted to a nearby hospital.” Those who were seriously wounded were later airlifted to Quetta for more advanced medical treatment.
After the explosion, a large contingent of military and police personnel arrived at the site and cordoned off the area.
Witnesses said that the blast had ignited the bus, leaving it destroyed. “The blast was so powerful that we heard it from miles away,” said Mansoor Mengal, a local resident. “The site was strewn with blood, children’s shoes and school bags.”
Balochistan has long been troubled by violence linked to separatist militant groups, including the outlawed Baloch Liberation Army. The group frequently targets security forces, government infrastructure and Chinese nationals involved in projects connected to the multibillion-dollar China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, Pakistan’s flagship initiative under Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.
This week, however, the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, an outlawed Islamist militant group primarily operating in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, near the border with Afghanistan, claimed responsibility for a separate attack in Khuzdar. That assault targeted a security post, killing four members of an irregular police unit.
No group has yet claimed responsibility for the school bus bombing on Wednesday.
The attack drew memories of a 2014 attack in Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, in which Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan militants stormed a similar military-run school and killed more than 140 students and staff in one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in the country’s history.
The Pakistani government and military, in separate statements, condemned Wednesday’s attack and charged that “India’s terrorist network orchestrated the assault through its proxy organizations operating in the region,” though no evidence was provided to support the claim.
The two nuclear-armed neighbors frequently accuse each other of supporting cross-border terrorism and fueling instability. Both countries are recovering from a deadly four-day exchange of drone and missile strikes, ignited by an attack that killed 26 tourists in the Indian-administered part of Kashmir. India blamed Pakistan for backing the attackers, while Islamabad denied involvement and called for an impartial international investigation.
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