AFP
At least six people were killed and 17 others wounded when a bomb exploded at a bus stop in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province yesterday, officials said.
“The blast occurred at a small bus stop in Kohat city. At least two vehicles were damaged in the explosion,” Salim Khan Marwat, district police chief in the town of Kohat, said.
“The explosion has left six people dead and 17 injured,” he added.
Fazal Khaliq, head of the emergency department at Kohat’s main government hospital, also confirmed the toll.
In February, 12 people including two women and a child were killed in a bombing at the same bus stop.
It is the second attack on a passenger vehicle to hit northwest Pakistan in a week.
On Thursday, a bomb blast on a coach in the city of Peshawar killed at least seven people and wounded another six.
Meanwhile, two unknown gunmen killed a local politician and his bodyguard in the picturesque Swat valley.
The gunmen, riding a motorbike, chased Ashraf Khan and his police guard when they were walking in their village in the Matta area.
Local police chief Sher Akbar Khan said that the latest incident came three days after militants slaughtered an official with the special police force nearby.
Pakistan’s northwest has been targeted for more than a decade by Al Qaeda and Taliban-led militants based in the semi-autonomous tribal regions bordering Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Pakistan’s military launched a major operation in June to destroy the bases of the Taliban and other militants in the North Waziristan tribal area.
It says it has killed more than a thousand militants and lost 86 soldiers since the start of the current operation.
Meanwhile, in another incident, a huge roadside bomb explosion in Pakistan’s southwestern Baluchistan province wounded at least seven people yesterday, security officials said.
Planted in a car parked by the side of the road, the bomb went off in a suburb of the city of Quetta as police officer’s vehicle was passing. Officials said it was unclear whether he was intended the target.
“The bomb was planted in a car in a relatively deserted location on Spini Road. It exploded just after a police deputy superintendent passed,” Quetta police chief Abdul Razzak Cheema said.
“Seven people who got injured in the blast were taken to hospital,” Cheema added.
Bomb disposal experts said a remote control was used in the blast.
“A planted device was used for the explosion which was detonated by remote control. Up to 40 kilos of explosives were used in the blast,” said bomb disposal chief Commander Abdul Razzak.
“Luckily the area was not that crowded. This huge quantity of explosives could have killed many people if exploded in a busy area,” he said.
No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack but Islamic sectarian militants and Baluch separatists are active in the area and often attack minority Shia Muslims as well as government forces and installations.
Resource-rich Baluchistan is home to a long-running separatist conflict that was revived in 2004, with nationalists seeking to stop what they see as the exploitation of the region’s natural resources and alleged rights abuses.
