Leave, Pakistan (AP) – A suicide car bomber struck a school bus on southwest Pakistan on Wednesday, killing five people – including at least three children – and injuring 38 others, the officials said, the last people Attack in the province of tense baloutchistan.
The province was the scene of a long -standing insurrectionWith a range of separatist groups featuring attacks, including the Liberation Army of Balutchistan, or BLA, appointed a terrorist group by the United States in 2019.
A local sub-commissioner, Yasir Iqbal, said that the attack had taken place on the outskirts of the city of Khuduzar while the bus was carrying children to their school managed by the military.
The troops quickly arrived at the scene and completed the region while the ambulances transported the victims to the hospitals of the city. Local television stations have released seriously damaged bus images and scattered debris.
No group immediately claimed the responsibility of the attack, but suspicions are likely to come across ethnic Baloutch separatists, who frequently target the security forces and civilians in the region.
The Minister of the Interior of Pakistan, Mohin Naqvi, firmly condemned the attack and expressed deep pain to the death of the children. He called the authors of “animals” who do not deserve any leniency, claiming that the enemy had committed an act of “pure barbarism by targeting innocent children”.
Managers, who initially pointed out that four children had been killed but then revised the number of deaths to say that two adults were also among the dead, said that they feared that the triggers could increase because several children were listed in critical condition.
Blame India
The soldiers also published a statement, saying that the bombing was “yet another loose and horrible attack” – allegedly planned by neighboring India and made by “its proxies in Balutchistan”.
There was no immediate comment from New Delhi.
Most of the province’s attacks are claimed by the BLA, which, according to Pakistan, has the support of India. India has denied such claims.
Prime minister Shehbaz Sharif expressed condolences and also blamed India, without providing proof to support the complaint.
“The attack on a school bus by terrorists supported by India is clear proof of their hostility towards education in Balutchistan,” said Sharif, promising that the government would reflect the perpetrators.
Pakistan regularly accuses India, its archrival, for violence at home. These accusations intensified following Increased tensions between the two nuclear nations In the middle of a cross -border climbing since last month in the disputed Himalayan region of the cashmere, divided between the two but wanted in its entirety by each.
This escalation raised fears a broader war and, during this period, the Bla called India for support. India did not comment on the call.
A vicious insurrection
Although the largest province in Pakistan, Baloutchistan is its least populated. It is also a hub for the country’s ethnic minority in the country, whose members say they are faced with discrimination by the government.
In one of his deadliest recent attacks, the BLA insurgents killed 33 people, mainly soldiers, during a assault on a train carrying hundreds of passengers in Balutchistan in March.
And earlier this week, the Bla has promised more attacks against “the Pakistani army and its collaborators” and says that its objective is to “lay the foundations for a peaceful, prosperous and independent baloutchistan”.
Militant groups are also active in Balutchistan and although it is unusual for separatists to target schoolchildren in the province, such attacks have been carried out in the real northwest and elsewhere in the country in recent years.
Most schools and colleges in Pakistan are operated by the government or the private sector, although soldiers also manage a large number of institutions for children of the two civilians and service for the service or retirement army.
In 2014, the Pakistani Taliban led the deadly school attack in the country against an institution managed by the army in the city in the northwest of Peshawar, killing 154 people, most children.
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Ahmed reported Islamabad.
