QUETTA: At least five people, including three paramilitary troops, were killed in a suicide blast, while three militants were killed in a follow-up operation in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province on Sunday, the Pakistani military said.
The vehicle-borne suicide bomber targeted a security forces convoy in Balochistan’s Nushki district, according to the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the military’s media wing.
The deceased included three paramilitary troops and two drivers. In the ensuing sanitization operation, three militants were killed after an intense exchange of fire with security forces.
“Sanitization operations in the area would continue and perpetrators of this heinous and cowardly act will be brought to justice,” the ISPR said in a statement.
A soldier inspects a bus after a blast in Nushki in Pakistan's southwestern Balochistan provice on March 16, 2025. (Nushki Police)
The Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), the most prominent ethnic Baloch separatist outfit in the province, claimed responsibility for the attack.
The attack took place near Rakhshani Mill at the N-40 highway connecting Pakistan to neighboring Iran in Nushki district, when a convoy of seven Frontier Corps (FC) paramilitary force buses was traveling to Taftan from the provincial capital of Quetta, according to Zafar Sumalani, station house officer at the Nushki police station. Eleven people sustained injuries as a result of the “powerful explosion.”
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif condemned the blast in a statement shared by his office. He directed authorities to provide best medical treatment to the injured.
“Such cowardly acts cannot shake our resolve against terrorism,” Sharif was quoted as saying by the PMO.
The blast takes place after BLA militants stormed the Jaffar Express train on Tuesday in a remote mountain pass in Balochistan after blowing up train tracks. The militants held over 400 passengers hostage in a day-long standoff before the military rescued them.
Pakistan security forces killed 33 insurgents, rescued 354 hostages before bringing the siege to a close on Wednesday, according to army spokesperson Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry. A final count showed 23 soldiers, three railway employees and five passengers had died in the attack.
Oil-and-mineral-rich Balochistan is Pakistan’s largest and least populated province. Ethnic Baloch separatists have long accused the central government of discrimination, which Islamabad denies.
The military has a huge presence in Balochistan bordering Afghanistan and Iran. The army has long run intelligence-based operations against insurgent groups such as the BLA, who have escalated attacks in recent months on the military and nationals from longtime ally China, which is building key projects in the region, including a port at Gwadar.
More than 50 people, including security forces, were killed in August last year in a string of assaults in Balochistan that were claimed by the BLA.
