Deadly bomb attack on convoy carrying Pakistani security forces

At least four people were killed and dozens of others injured in a bomb blast targeting civilian and security forces vehicles, police in southwestern Pakistan said Saturday.

The deadly attack took place in the town of Turbat in the sparsely populated Balochistan province, which is famous for its abundant natural resources. Most of the victims were reportedly members of the Frontier Corps paramilitary force. The FC guards Pakistan’s borders and handles counter-terrorism operations.

Provincial police spokeswoman Rabia Tariq confirmed the number of casualties in English. dawn Newspaper.

According to eyewitness accounts and footage from the scene, a convoy of vehicles was passing through the city when an explosion occurred, causing one of the vehicles to burst into flames.

Roshan Baloch, a regional police officer, told VOA by phone that an explosive device was hidden inside a car parked on the side of the road and detonated remotely. He said that many injured people have been admitted to the local hospital in critical condition.

The Baloch Liberation Army, a separatist organization, immediately claimed responsibility for the attack and claimed that one of its suicide bombers was the culprit. The veracity of the claim could not be immediately ascertained.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif condemned the bombing and expressed his condolences to the families of those “martyred in the bombing”, his office said in a statement in the national capital Islamabad.

Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest province, regularly experiences attacks claimed by or blamed on the BLA and several smaller ethnic Baloch separatist groups. The rebels justified their violent campaign by saying that they were fighting for the province’s independence from Pakistan.

Separately, officials in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province reported a gun attack on a government convoy en route to the besieged Kurram district on the Afghan border. The district deputy commissioner was among at least four people injured in the attack.

The victims were on their way to oversee the distribution of essential supplies including food, fuel and medicine to thousands of residents of Kurram, which has been the site of months of violent clashes between heavily armed Shia and Sunni Muslim tribes. In connection with the land dispute.

Hundreds of people have been killed and injured in violence in recent months. The latest clashes between rival groups prompted the provincial government to close all roads in and out of Kurram for weeks.

A peace deal signed between the warring parties earlier in the week had raised hopes of sending essential supplies to the district, but Saturday’s gun attack forced authorities to halt aid convoys. There was no claim of responsibility for the firing incident.

Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, bordering Afghanistan, have seen a dramatic increase in terrorist attacks in the past year, killing more than 1,600 Pakistani civilians and security forces.