Three people were killed and 20 injured when a bomb planted on a motorcycle exploded in Pakistan’s restive southwestern province of Balochistan yesterday, officials said.
The bomb went off in the town of Sibi, 130km southeast of the provincial capital, Quetta.
Senior police official Ghulam Ali Baluch, who gave the casualty toll, said two of the people injured in the attack are in critical condition.
“The bomb was planted in a motorbike. We are investigating the possible targets, but we have not found any specific target yet,” Baluch said.
Balochistan Home Secretary Akbar Hussain Durrani confirmed the incident.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack as of yet, but Baluch separatists demanding greater autonomy have been waging an insurgency for years.
Resource-rich Balochistan is the largest of Pakistan’s four provinces, but its roughly 7 million inhabitants have long complained that they do not receive a fair share of its gas and mineral wealth.
Rebels began their fifth insurgency against the state in 2004, with hundreds of soldiers and militants killed in the fighting since then.
A prominent Pakistani women’s rights activist was shot dead in the port city of Karachi late on Friday after she hosted a seminar on abuses in Balochistan.
Human rights groups have long accused the security forces and intelligence agencies of serious abuses in the province.
The agencies deny the allegations.
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