At least nine people, including five children, were killed and 27 others were injured as an autorickshaw carrying schoolchildren bore the brunt of a bomb blast targeting a police mobile van in Pakistan’s restive Balochistan province on Friday.
The blast occurred at 8.35 am near a girl's high school at the Civil Hospital Chowk of the Mastung district of the province.
Deputy Commissioner Mastung Baz Muhammad Marri said in the evening that the death toll has risen to nine.
“Among the deceased are five girls, one boy, one police officer, and two other civilians,” he said.
Earlier, Mastung District Police Officer (DPO) Miandad Umrani confirmed that while seven people, including five schoolchildren, had died on the spot after the blast, one of the injured passed away in a hospital.
“The number of injured is around 27 and some civilians themselves took some of the injured to the hospitals,” he said.
The initial death toll was seven and injured around 17 but Umrani said the condition of some of the injured was critical as well.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack yet, but ethnic Baloch terrorists and Taliban terrorists often attack the security forces in the province, which has been facing a low-level insurgency for about two decades now.
“The target of the IED bomb triggered via a timer appeared to be a police van stationed near a hospital and a high school which are metres away from each other,” he said.
Terrorists used a remote control device to detonate explosive material hidden in a parked motorbike, officials said.
"It was an IED (improvised explosive device) used in the blast, and the target apparently was a police mobile parked near the school," Kalat Division Commissioner Naeem Bazai said.
A majority of the injured are policemen and civilians as the children were in the school when the blast took place.
Separatist outfits banned by the authorities have stepped up their terror attacks in the last 2-3 months and recently killed five security guards and workers at a dam in Panjgur.
TV footage after the attack showed policemen and other people surrounding a charred vehicle.
Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif and Balochistan Chief Minister Sarfaraz Bugti condemned the blast, saying it was “inhumane” to harm schoolchildren.
Bugti said terrorists had now “targeted innocent children along with poor labourers” in an apparent reference to a recent attack by unidentified gunmen at a dam construction site in the province's Panjgur district, which killed five workers and injured two others.
“We will avenge the murder of innocent children and people,” the chief minister said, adding that civilians in urban areas also needed to be on the watch for the terrorists. “The monster of terrorism can only be fought together,” he said.
He added that terrorists had targeted children, deeming them to be a “soft target”.
In the aftermath of the blast, an emergency was declared across all Quetta hospitals, Geo News reported, quoting the provincial health department spokesperson, adding that all doctors, pharmacists, staff nurses and other medical staff were summoned.
