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10 killed in bus explosion in Pakistan’s Baluchistan

Pakistani volunteers and residents move the body of a blast victim from a bus after a bomb explosion in Quetta on October 19, 2015. (AFP photo)

At least ten people have been killed in a powerful explosion in a bus terminal in Pakistan’s southwestern Baluchistan province.

The blast on Monday in the city of Quetta targeted a passenger bus stationed at the terminal with some 40 passengers on board.

"I can confirm that at least 10 people have been killed and 23 were injured in a bomb explosion in a bus," said Akbar Hussain Durrani, home secretary of Baluchistan province.

Unconfirmed reports also said that two children were among the dead with six of the injured in critical condition.

"We suspect somebody had hid a bomb in the backside of the bus, but there are also chances that somebody was maybe carrying it," Durrani also said.

Police cordoned off the area and ambulances rushed to the region to transfer the injured people to nearby hospitals.

Baluchistan’s chief minister Abdul Malik Baloch strongly condemned the bombing and termed it as "a conspiracy against durable peace in Baluchistan."

On October 14, a powerful bomb explosion struck political office of Sardar Amjad Farooq Khosa from the conservative Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party in Punjab province, leaving seven dead.

Thousands of Pakistanis have lost their lives in bombings and other militant attacks since 2001, when Pakistan entered an alliance with the US in the so-called war on terror. Thousands more have been displaced by the wave of violence and militancy sweeping the country.

Pakistan has been waging a major offensive against militant hideouts across the troubled northwestern tribal regions since June last year, when a deadly raid on the Karachi International Airport ended the government’s faltering peace talks with the militants.

Pakistan’s army intensified its military operations after pro-Taliban elements killed over 150 people, most of them children, in an armed assault on a school in Peshawar in December 2014.


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