ISLAMABAD, 25 January 2006 — Six people were killed and five others were injured when their minibus hit a land mine on Bekhar-Rakhni Road in Balochistan early yesterday.
In another incident in the province, militants fired a rocket into a deserted market in the town of Wadh before dawn, damaging a shop but causing no casualties, police said.
The minibus hit the mine on a road near the town of Pekal in Dera Bugti district, where government forces launched a crackdown on militants last month, a district official said.
The dead included two women and two children, while five people were wounded.
District Coordination Officer Abdul Samad Lasi blamed the attack on “miscreants”, a term the government uses for Baloch nationalists fighting for greater control of resources in the gas-rich province.
The attacks followed blasts on Tuesday that blew up a pipeline supplying water to a government gas purification plant in the Pirkoh area of the district, he said.
In the past month, mines planted by militants have killed five troops of the Frontier Corps paramilitary force and destroyed seven vehicles, a paramilitary official said.
