Roadside blast kills two cops in Quetta

QUETTA: A roadside bomb killed two policemen and injured eight other people on Tuesday, police and rescue officials said.

“A bomb planted on Sariab Road went off just as a police van passed by,” Geo News quoted Superintendent Police Abdullah Afridi as saying. It was not immediately clear whether all the injured were policemen, Afridi said.

The injured were moved to Civil Hospital Quetta, where at least one of them is said to be in critical condition.

Rescue officials said two policemen were killed and five others injured in the attack that apparently targeted their van. Two passers by are said to have sustained injuries in the attack. The police suspect that the attack was carried out through a remote-controlled device.

Earlier in the day, at least three policemen were injured when a suicide bomber detonated his explosives while trying to enter Khanpur Imambargah in Shikarpur district of SIindh province as worshipers were offering Eid prayers.

Worshippers overpowered the second would-be suicide bomber as the police were reeling from their injuries inflicted in the first blast. </s> Karachi: At least two policemen were killed in a roadside blast in the troubled Balochistan province while 13 people were injured in two separate suicide bombings during Eid prayers on Tuesday targeting minority Shias in Pakistan's relatively peaceful southern Sindh province.

Two police officials were killed and 10 other injured in a blast near a police training centre on Quetta's Sariab road when militants targeted a police patrol vehicle in the area, police said.

Also, four suicide attackers infiltrated Shikarpur district's Khanpur tehsil, 470 kilometres north of Karachi, police said.

Two of the attackers targeted an Eid prayer ground where one assailant blew himself up, injuring 10 people, two of whom were policemen. The other attacker managed to flee, they said.

Two other suicide bombers targeted a Shia mosque but they were stopped at the entrance by policemen, which led to one of them blowing himself up while the other was arrested. Three policemen were injured in the attack, one of whom was critical. Last year, at least 61 people were killed in a suicide attack on a mosque in the district.

"Alert" policemen at the venues prevented huge casualties, police officer Beherdin Kehrio told reporters. "If the policemen had not prevented these suicide bombers from entering the prayer venues there would have been largescale casualties because of the large gathering because of Eid prayers," he said.

He said the attackers at the Shia mosque were stopped by policemen as they looked suspicious and when confronted one of them detonated himself. "The other attacker was brought down and arrested," he added.

Those injured in the blast have been admitted to hospitals in Shikarpur for treatment. No group has immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.

Pakistan has been frequently hit by sectarian violence in recent years, most of them perpetrated by hardline Sunni Muslim groups against minority Shia Muslims. However, Sindh is considered a relatively peaceful of Pakistan's four provinces and is highly influenced by Sufi doctrines and principles. </s> A powerful blast targeting a police vehicle in Pakistan’s restive Balochistan province has killed five people, including two security personnel, and injured 38 others, a top police official said on Wednesday.

The blast took place close to a police vehicle at the Bacha Khan Chowk in the remit of the City Police Station on Tuesday, Quetta’s Deputy Inspector-General (DIG) of police Abdul Razzaq Cheema said.

The target of the blast appeared to be the Station House Officer (SHO) of the area who received some injuries and has been shifted to a hospital, the DIG told reporters. “The bomb went off as soon as SHO Shaffat got down from his vehicle,” he said, adding that the condition of the SHO is said to be critical.

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Cheema said it was too early to confirm whether it was a suicide attack or the blast caused by a remotely triggered device.

Police said the bomb was planted in a motorcycle parked close to the patrolling vehicle. Five people, including two cops, were killed and 38 others injured in the attack. Three people died on the spot, police said.

The injured included women and children who were passing through the area when the bomb went off in the heart of the city. The condition of at least six of them was stated to be serious.

Earlier, police officials said terrorists had planted explosives in a motorcycle and parked it near the police vehicle before it was detonated. A contingent of the law enforcement agencies threw a security cordon around the area as rescuers continued evacuations.

The banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan claimed responsibility for the blast, according to a report in a leading Pakistani daily.

The injured and bodies of the dead were shifted to the Civil Hospital, where officials confirmed the death toll.

The impact of the blast was so strong that it shattered the glass windows of nearby shopping malls and damaged parked vehicles and motorcycles.

Home Minister Mir Zia Langove said the government would not be cowed down by such attacks and the mission to purge the province of the menace of terrorism would continue.

Balochistan Governor retired Justice Amanullah Khan Yasinzai, Chief Minister Jam Kamal Khan and his cabinet members strongly condemned the bomb blast and expressed their grief and sorrow over the loss of lives of innocent people.

It was the second bomb explosion within the last seven days in the provincial capital. On July 23, a blast had occurred in the Eastern Bypass area which left four people dead and 32 injured.

Balochistan has been wrecked by ethnic, sectarian and separatist violence for more than a decade. </s> At least four people have been killed and more than two dozen injured in an explosion outside a police station in southwest Pakistan, an official said.

The blast on Tuesday evening, which apparently targeted the police, took place in the car park of the city police station in Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province. It was the latest in a series of similar attacks.

Provincial Home Minister Mir Zia Langov told Anadolu Agency - a news service - that four people were killed and 26 injured, including many policemen in the attack.

However, Abdul Razzaq Cheema, the Quetta police chief, told Reuters news agency that five people, including two policemen, had been killed. He added that two women and a child were among the 27 injured.

Cheema said an explosive-rigged motorcycle was detonated to target a police van parked outside the station in the heart of the city's busy shopping area.

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Footage aired on local broadcaster Dawn News showed ambulances carrying the dead and wounded to hospital. Blood-soaked caps, shoes and other belongings were scattered around the scene among pieces of broken glass and wooden doors.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.

Pakistan Taliban and Baloch separatists have for long been targeting security forces in the region.

In a similar blast last Tuesday, two people were killed and 16 more injured when an explosive-rigged motorbike went off outside a shop in Quetta.

Violence in the Balochistan province, which borders Afghanistan and Iran, has raised concerns about the security of investments, in particular, an energy link planned to run from western China to Pakistan's southern port of Gwadar. </s> Islamabad, Pakistan - At least 12 people have been killed and 14 wounded in a suicide car bomb attack near the provincial police chief's office in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta, police officials told Al Jazeera.

The explosion on Friday morning struck a police checkpoint near a complex that is housing the Balochistan police chief's office, local police officer Muhammad Akbar said.

At least six police officers were among those killed, Ali Mardan, a senior police officer, told Al Jazeera.

Initial reports indicated a vehicle approached the checkpoint and explosives were set off when the driver of the vehicle was stopped by the police, provincial government spokesperson Anwar ul-Haq Kakar told local television channel Geo News.

"At 8:45am (03:45 GMT), there was an old car, a Toyota Corolla ... that came here near the [police chief's] office and it was stopped by the police personnel. That is when the blast took place," he said.

"There was no exchange of fire, but it's possible that law-enforcement personnel may have fired into the air."

Jamaat-ur-Ahrar, a faction of the Pakistan Taliban, has claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement sent out its spokesperson Asad Mansoor.

Altaf Hussain, local police official, said: "Some of the wounded are still in critical condition. Most are police personnel, as well as a traffic warden."

"It was a suicide attack. They came to the intersection and then blew themselves up there," said Hussain.

Al Jazeera's Kamal Hyder, reporting from Islamabad, said the Inspector General's office was the likely target of the attack.

"The attack took place in the red zone, close to the IG's office as well as the State Bank of Pakistan," he said.

"Authorities are saying the IG's office could've been the target."

Quetta, the provincial capital of Balochistan province, has seen frequent attacks targeting government buildings and security forces, as well as civilians.

In February, two bomb disposal squad members were killed and 11 others wounded in an explosion under Quetta's Saryab bridge, local media reported.

In August last year, at least 74 people were killed in a suicide attack on the city's Civil Hospital, while another 60 were killed in an attack on a police academy two months later.

Past attacks in the province have been claimed by the Pakistani Taliban, ISIL, as well as by Baloch separatist fighters who are fighting for independence from Pakistan.

The province has also seen a number of attacks carried out by the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi's Al Alami faction, a group with ties to ISIL, known for attacking Shia Muslims.

Targeting CPEC

The resource-rich province is central to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a $56bn trade and infrastructure project that seeks to create a major trade route from southwestern China to the Arabian Sea through the Balochistan port of Gwadar.

Security in Balochistan has been a major concern for CPEC, with separatists regularly attacking workers building road and other projects associated with the corridor.

Earlier this month, two Chinese citizens were kidnapped and killed in the province.

Pakistan has established a Special Security Division comprising 15,000 troops to secure the CPEC corridor and projects associated with it.

The Pakistani government and military have repeatedly blamed neighbours India for fomenting instability in Balochistan, although officials have presented limited evidence to back this claim.

On Thursday, Kulbhashan Yadav, an Indian national who has been convicted and sentenced to death by a military court for funding and planning attacks in Balochistan for the Indian spy agency RAW, submitted a confession and mercy petition to Pakistan's army chief, the Pakistani military said. </s> QUETTA, Pakistan: Six security officials were killed in an attack in southwestern Pakistan on Friday when their convoy came under heavy firing in a mountainous area near the border with Iran.

Pakistan's restive Baluchistan province has been hit by a number of attacks on security personnel but the number of large scale incidents has decreased significantly since 2016.

The province's information minister Zahoor Ahmed Buledi told Reuters that six members of the Frontier Corps paramilitary force in charge of security in the region were killed in "heavy" firing along a mountainous stretch of road in the Kech district.

Fourteen others were wounded. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Islamist militants linked to the Taliban, al Qaeda and Islamic State have been operating in the province, which borders Iran as well as Afghanistan. It also has an indigenous ethnic Baluch insurgency fighting the central government.

Last month, three men from the separatist Baloch Liberation Army stormed the Chinese embassy in Pakistan's southern metropolis Karachi, killing four people including two policemen.

They were shot and killed by police before they could force their way in in a car packed with explosives.

Baluchistan, which has rich mineral and natural gas reserves but remains Pakistan’s poorest province, is the site of a long-running rebellion by separatists who argue the state is taking over their lands and have targeted Chinese-funded projects.

In July, a suicide bomber detonated in the middle of a crowded election rally in the province, killing 128 people including electoral candidate Siraj Raisani. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the blast. </s> At least seven people have been killed in an explosion in the tribal area of Bajaur agency in northwest of the country.

A Pakistani official says a roadside bomb has killed a senior tribal government administrator and four tribal police near the Afghan border.

Fawad Ali, the assistant administrator, was traveling with police to attend a meeting when their vehicle was struck by the device in the town of Mamoond, some 25km from Khar, the main town of Bajaur on Sunday.

Anwarul Haq, another tribal official, says the device was detonated remotely, and that a search for the perpetrators is under way.

Al Jazeera's Kamal Hyder, reporting from Lahore, said the police believe the attack was aimed to target the official.

"The official along with his five police guards were hit by the explosion that happened along close to the Afghan border," he said.

"Pakistan is blaming some of the Pakistan banned groups based across Afghanistan for carrying out these deadly attacks."

The Pakistani Taliban, also known as Tehreek e-Taliban (TTP), claimed responsibility for the attack.

Armed groups have long operated in the tribal region along the Afghan border, where they attack security forces and those seen as cooperating with the central government.

In June, a twin bombings killed at least 67 people and wounded more than 200 in the northwestern Pakistani city of Parachinar's Toori Bazar.

Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a Sunni armed group, claimed the bombings in the predominantly Shia Muslim town.

On the same day, a suicide bombing claimed by the Jamaat-ur-Ahrar, a faction of the Pakistani Taliban, killed at least 14 people at a police checkpoint in Quetta in Balochistan province.

At least 10 of the victims were police officers, bringing the overall death toll from three separate attacks across the country to 85. </s> Twin blasts tore through a market crowded with Eid shoppers in a mainly Shia town, a suicide bomber blew up his explosives-laden car and militants opened fire on police in separate attacks in Pakistan's three major cities today, killing 62 people and wounding nearly 100.

The suicide bomber blew up his explosives-laden car near Inspector General of Police Ehsan Mehboob's office in Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province, killing at least 13 people, including seven policemen, and wounding 21 others.

The blast was claimed by both the local affiliate of the Islamic State terror group and by Jamaat-ul-Ahrar (JuA), a splinter group of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan.

Thirteen people, including seven policemen, died in the suicide car bombing, officials said.

Hours later, two back-to-back blasts tore through a market crowded with the people shopping for Eid in the Shia- dominated Parachinar city in the Kurram tribal region, killing at least 45 people, mostly Shias, and injuring 75 others.

The first blast occurred during rush hour in Turi Market, where a bus terminal is also located. The second blast took place as rescuers and bystanders rushed to aid those who had been hurt in the first explosion.

At least 45 people have been killed and 75 others injured in Parachinar, an official from the Parachinar administration told </s> One policeman and three suicide bombers were killed in an attack on a police station in Pakistan’s Balochistan province on Wednesday.

The attack took place in the morning when three suicide bombers tried to enter the police station in the Loralai city, the media wing of Pakistan’s armed forces, Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), said in a statement.

While one attacker was shot dead by the police at the entrance to the complex, other two managed to enter the centre, Geo News reported. “In the exchange of fire one suicide bomber (of the remaining two) exploded himself and the other was killed by security forces,” the ISPR said.

One policeman was killed and two other officers were wounded in the attack.

A police recruitment centre in the same city was attacked in January claiming 12 lives and wounding 21 others.

Balochistan, the largest and least populated state of Pakistan, has witnessed frequent attacks by separatist groups, armed Islamist forces and organised crime networks, making it one of the nation’s most unstable and insecure regions. In July last year, 149 people were killed in an attack in the province during a poll-related rally. It was one of the worst attacks in the history of the Asian country.
A roadside blast in the Balochistan Province kills two policemen and injures eight people.