QUETTA: One person was killed while 15 others, including army soldiers, were injured in southwestern Pakistan on Sunday when a passenger bus headed toward Pakistan’s Punjab province was targeted by an improvised explosive device (IED), an official of the paramilitary Levies force said.
The blast occurred in Khori, a small town located at a distance of 40 kilometers from Khuzdar city in southwestern Balochistan province, Ali Nawaz, a Levies official in Khori, told Arab News.
He said the bus carrying 30 passengers was headed to the eastern city of Rawalpindi from Khuzdar when it was targeted by an IED blast fitted in a vehicle parked on the M-8 highway at 9:30 am.
“One passenger was killed on the spot while 15 were injured,” Nawaz told Arab News. “Initial investigations by police have revealed that around 25 kilograms of explosive material were used in the attack, which destroyed one side of the passenger bus.”
Nawaz said the injured have been shifted to the District Headquarters (DHQ) hospital and the Combined Military Hospital (CMH) in Khuzdar.
“Soldiers of Pakistan’s armed forces are among the injured who were traveling in the bus,” he said, without specifying how many of the injured were soldiers.
No group has claimed responsibility for the blast. However, the separatist Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) has claimed killing ethnic Punjabi laborers in the past.
BLA militants claimed responsibility for killing at least 23 residents of Punjab in Balochistan’s Musakhel district in August 2024. The victims were forced out of their vehicles by the militants, who shot them after checking their identity.
Simultaneous attacks were also launched on the same day that killed over 50 in one of the deadliest attacks in Balochistan in recent years.
Balochistan, a mineral-rich province that shares borders with Iran and Afghanistan, has faced an insurgency for decades which has intensified in recent years.
Baloch separatist groups and nationalist political leaders accuse the central government in Islamabad of exploiting the province’s natural resources such as gold and copper while neglecting the local population.
Successive Pakistani governments have denied the allegations, saying they have prioritized Balochistan’s development through investments in health, education and infrastructure projects.
Earlier this month the BLA targeted a convoy of paramilitary soldiers in the province’s Turbat city with a vehicle-borne bomb. Five Pakistani paramilitary soldiers were killed in the attack.
