KARACHI, Mar 27:
At least eight people were killed, 17 injured and three abducted in two separate terror attacks by suspected insurgents in Pakistan’s restive Balochistan province since Wednesday.
A bomb exploded near a police vehicle in the Barech Market area of Quetta on Thursday, killing two people and injuring 17 others.
Balochistan government spokesperson Shahid Rind said that an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) was hidden in a motorcycle which detonated near a parked police vehicle.
He said the injured were rushed to the civil hospital and the conditions of four of them were critical.
Earlier, on Wednesday night, insurgents shot and killed six people from Punjab after offloading them from a passenger bus in the Gwadar district.
They also abducted three passengers before disappearing into the mountains.
The attack occurred when armed men stopped a Karachi-bound passenger bus from Gwadar near the Kalmat area on the Ormara highway late on Wednesday, said Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Hafeez Baloch.
He said that five of the passengers were killed instantly while one survivor passed away later in hospital Thursday morning, raising the death toll to six.
“Armed men killed six passengers after checking their ID cards and took away three others,” he said, adding that all victims belonged to the country’s Punjab province.
No group claimed responsibility for the attack, but in the past, ethnic Baloch terrorist groups carried out such targeted attacks against the people of Punjab.
The militants also stopped three long-body trailers carrying urea from Gwadar port by setting up roadblocks and setting them on fire.
Security forces moved towards the area where militants had blocked highways, with operations to clear the roads underway. (PTI)
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