Pakistan (AFP) – A bomb attack killed 11 people and wounded dozens more in a crowded part of Pakistan’s southwestern city of Quetta on Thursday, police said.
The target was not immediately clear, but local TV channels said the bomb detonated close to a paramilitary checkpoint in the capital of Baluchistan province, which suffers from Islamist militancy, sectarian violence and a separatist insurgency.
“According to our information, 11 people were killed and 27 injured in the blast. We will be able to tell you after some time what kind of device it was, but it was a crowded place,” said Quetta police chief Mir Zubair Mehmood.
TV stations broadcast harrowing images of casualties being stretched from the scene. Heavily armed security officers were shown patrolling the site as people sifted through debris.
On December 30, a car bomb killed at least 19 Shiite Muslim pilgrims en route to Iran in Mastung district, some 30 kilometres (18 miles) south of Quetta.