Four cops killed in attack claimed by Taliban in southwestern Pakistan

QUETTA: An improvised bomb rigged to a motorcycle and targeting a police vehicle exploded near a mosque in the Pakistani city of Quetta in southwestern Balochistan province, a senior police officer said on Monday night, in the third major attack in the country in a week.
Security across most of Pakistan has improved over recent years following a major crackdown after 148 people, most of them children, were killed when gunmen stormed an army-run school in the northwestern city of Peshawar in 2014.
But a string of attacks this week has underscored that militants can continue to launch major attacks and undermine stability in the nuclear-armed nation of 208 million people.
Quetta’s Deputy Inspector General Police Abdul Razzaq Cheema told Arab News four policemen were killed in an assault on a police vehicle outside the Al Huda Mosque in the Satellite Town area of Quetta before the late night tarawih prayers. Seven others attending prayers at the mosque were wounded.
In the fasting month of Ramadan, Muslims say the extra tarawih prayers after the obligatory Isha prayers at night.
“Terrorists were unable to hit the worshippers due to our security measures; that’s why they decided to attack the police,” Cheema said.
Dr. Waseem Baig, a spokesperson of Quetta’s civil hospital, said eleven people were injured and one of them, a civilian, was in critical condition.
The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the blast in an emailed statement that said, “Our mine masters today night at 8:45 targeted police vehicles through IED.”
Many vehicles parked in the area were damaged and windows of nearby buildings shattered due to the impact of the powerful blast, though the mosque was not hit.
Funerals for four cops, who belonged to the Rapid Response Force, were held at civil lines in Quetta and attended by top political and police officials, including Chief Minister Jam Kamal Khan.
“These barbaric terrorists have no religion and targeted Muslim Namazi (worshipers),” Kamran Asad, a spokesman for the chief minister said, quoting the top official. “CM has said that the terrorists killing innocent people and those raising slogans against the country will not be tolerated.”
Monday night’s attack comes just days after a splinter group of the Taliban had claimed an attack on a police vehicle guarding a major Sufi shrine in the eastern city of Lahore that killed at least 12.
In another attack over the weekend, gunmen stormed a luxury hotel in the port city of Gwadar in Balochistan, killing at least five people, in what the militants said was a strike against Chinese and other foreign investors who are behind infrastructure and energy projects in the province, including a commercial deepwater port.
Saturday’s attack on the Pearl Continental Hotel was claimed by the Balochistan Liberation Army, a separatist group that has been fighting a low-level insurgency against the government for decades.
Gwadar is a strategic port on the Arabian Sea that is being developed as part of the $62 billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor, which is itself part of China’s Belt and Road infrastructure project. Separatist groups have denounced the development plans and vowed to block them while Pakistan has promised China it would protect its investments and Chinese workers.

Four cops killed in attack claimed by Taliban in southwestern Pakistan