9 people, including 5 policemen, injured when bomb explodes in Quetta city.
KARACHI, Pakistan (AA) – At least two policemen were killed and nine people were injured in a roadside blast in southwestern Pakistan on Sunday, police said.
The explosion – latest in a slew of terrorist attacks on security forces – occurred in a busy street in Quetta, the capital of southwestern Balochistan province.
The bomb, planted in a motorbike parked along Zargon road, was detonated through remote control, targeting a police patrol van, Balochistan’s Interior Minister Mir Zia Langov told Anadolu Agency.
The injured, including five cops, were transferred to the hospital. Among them, at least two are critically injured, according to the police.
No group has so far claimed responsibility for the attack, however, security agencies point a finger of blame at Baloch separatists, who have been fighting for cessation of the mineral-rich province.
The large Balochistan province has been plagued by violence for over six decades, with separatists claiming it was forcibly incorporated into Pakistan at the end of the British rule in 1947.
The province is a key route of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a $65 billion project aimed at connecting China’s strategically important northwestern Xinxiang province to Balochistan’s Gawadar port through a network of roads, railways, and pipelines to transport cargo, oil, and gas.