At least 10 people have been killed and others wounded after a bomb struck a vehicle carrying labourers in southwestern Pakistan.
An improvised explosive device (IED) hit the truck when it was travelling in the Harnai area of Balochistan province on Friday, local officials said.
Security forces have been battling a decades-long rebellion by separatist groups in impoverished Balochistan, with violence in the border regions surging over the past three years.
“Ten mine workers were killed in an attack in Harnai district,” Shahzad Zahri, a senior government official, told AFP news agency.
Officials said the vehicle was carrying coal miners, and that most of the victims were from the country’s northwestern Swat Valley and other areas.
“An improvised explosive device was planted at the roadside which exploded when truck carting coal miners reached the site,” a paramilitary official told the Reuters news agency. The official, who declined to be identified, added that it may have been a remote operated device.
Local government official Saleem Tareen also told AFP the blast was caused by an IED, saying the victims were on their way to a market when the bomb hit.
The region’s deputy commissioner, Hazrat Wali Agha, told Reuters that 17 miners were in the truck when the bomb went off.
Several people were injured and taken to a local hospital. A doctor at the facility told Reuters that two of the wounded were in critical condition.
Harnai is more than 160km (100 miles) from Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province.
In a statement, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif reaffirmed his “commitment to actively working towards eradicating the menace of terrorism from the country”.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
However, the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) is the most active group in the region and often carries out deadly attacks against security forces or Pakistanis from other provinces.
The group has also targeted energy projects with foreign financing, accusing outsiders of exploiting the resource-rich region while excluding residents in the poorest part of Pakistan.
Earlier this month, a vehicle carrying troops in a town in Balochistan came under fire from 70 to 80 assailants who had blocked the road.
In another attack in January, at least six people including Pakistani paramilitary troops were killed and dozens injured in a bombing.
Both the attacks were claimed by BLA.
Last year, in one of the deadliest attacks in the region according to analysts, BLA separatist fighters killed at least 39 people in “coordinated” attacks that largely targeted ethnic Punjabis.
Violence has surged in Pakistan’s border regions since the Afghan Taliban returned to power in Kabul in 2021.
Pakistan has accused the Taliban government of failing to rout out fighters who launch attacks from Afghan soil, a charge it denies.
Last year was the deadliest in a decade for Pakistan, with a surge in attacks that killed at least 1,500 people, including 685 members of the police or security forces, according to the Center for Research and Security Studies, an Islamabad-based analysis group.
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