ISLAMABAD/QUETTA, 13 June 2006 — Five people, including a woman and a child, were killed and 17 others wounded in a bomb blast yesterday in the southwestern Balochistan province, police said.
Some explosive material placed inside a hotel on Saryab Road in the provincial capital Quetta caused the explosion, senior police official Qazi Abdul Wahid said citing initial reports.
City police chief Wazir Khan Nasser later told AFP the device apparently planted on a bicycle went off during the morning rush hour at an intersection usually crowded with commuters.
Witnesses said a shop and a hotel were badly damaged. Blood was splattered on the floor and slippers scattered on the road, as panic gripped the area after the blast.
Police and security forces cordoned off the area and a bomb disposal squad was trying to identify the type of explosive used in the blast, Nasser said.
Citing witnesses, he said a man came to the area at about 10:30 a.m. (0530 GMT) and disappeared after parking his bicycle. “There was a huge blast soon after he left.” A pushcart belonging to a fruit vendor was blown to pieces.
City Mayor Mir Maqbool Lehri told AFP the blast site was very close to a police station but there were no police casualties.
Autonomy-seeking militants from the nationalist Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) were believed to be responsible, a police official said.
The BLA is fighting for control of gas resources in Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest but poorest province and its biggest source of natural gas.
“We received four dead bodies and 18 injured while one child succumbed to his wounds in a ward,” said Abdul Rahim, the senior doctor on duty at Quetta’s main hospital, bringing the total number of dead so far to five.
Three of the wounded were in critical condition, he said.
“I was sitting outside my shop when a powerful explosion went off. It completely destroyed three shops,” said Inayatullah, one of the wounded men, from his hospital bed.
Senior provincial policeman Ghulam Mohammad Dogar said he suspected the bomb was the work of BLA militants, who have claimed responsibility for previous attacks in the area.
The militants say the people of Balochistan receive little benefit from its natural gas. They have attacked gas facilities, blowing up pipelines, as well as railway lines, security checkpoints and other government targets.
Last month, the BLA claimed responsibility when five bombs exploded in a police training camp on the outskirts of Quetta, killing six policemen. The government declared the group a terrorist organization in April.
The Baloch nationalist rebels have no links to Al-Qaeda- and Taleban-linked fighters based on the border with Afghanistan, security officials say.
The rebels have waged a low-key insurgency for decades but their campaign has intensified over the past year. Pakistan accused its old rival India of meddling in the province, which borders Afghanistan.
The government mounted a sweeping offensive in the 1970s aimed at finishing off the rebels.
