Explosion in Pakistan mosque kills 4 people

At least four people have been killed in an explosion that rocked a mosque near Quetta, the provincial capital of Pakistan’s restive province of Balochistan.

Police said the blast took place at a mosque located 25 km from Quetta on Friday, killing four people, including the imam of the mosque.

“The blast was carried out through a timed device that was planted under the wooden chair of the prayer leader,” Quetta’s chief of police, Abdul Razzaq Chmeea, said.

Shafqat Janjua, a police official, told Reuters that the death toll could rise as some of the victims were seriously injured.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the explosion.

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

Pakistan’s restive and mineral-rich Balochistan Province in particular is rife with separatist, extremist, and sectarian violence and has been the scene of several bomb and gun attacks over the past years.

On July 30, a blast near a police station in Quetta left 32 people dead or wounded.

Balochistan is the focus of numerous projects in the 57-billion-dollar China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a transport and energy route planned to link western China to Pakistan’s southern deepwater port of Gwadar.

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