A suicide car bomber struck a school bus in southwestern Pakistan, killing five people — including three girls — and wounding 53 others, mostly children, officials said. This is the latest attack in the tense Balochistan province.
The province has been the scene of a long-running insurgency, with an array of separatist groups staging attacks, including the outlawed Balochistan Liberation Army, or BLA, designated a terror group by the United States in 2019.
A local deputy commissioner, Yasir Iqbal, said the attack took place on the outskirts of the city of Khuzdar as the bus was taking children to their military-run school.
Pakistan’s Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi called the perpetrators "beasts" who deserve no leniency. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.
Naqvi said those responsible had committed an act of "sheer barbarism by targeting innocent children".
Officials initially reported that four children were killed but later revised the death toll to say two soldiers were among the dead. Several children were listed in critical condition.
Blaming India
The military in a statement called the bombing "yet another cowardly and ghastly attack," allegedly planned by neighbouring India and carried out by "its proxies in Balochistan".
There was no immediate comment from New Delhi.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif also blamed India, without providing evidence.
"The attack on a school bus by terrorists backed by India is clear proof of their hostility toward education in Balochistan," Sharif said.
Later, Sharif traveled to Quetta, Balochistan's capital, to meet with wounded people.
Pakistan regularly accuses India, its archrival, for violence at home. Accusations have intensified in the wake of heightened tensions between the nuclear-armed nations amid a cross-border escalation over the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, divided between the two but sought in its entirety by each.
That escalation raised fears of a broader war, and during this period the BLA appealed to India for support. India has not commented on the appeal.
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