At least five persons have been killed and numerous others injured in a bombing on a school bus in the Balochistan province of Pakistan.
Just outside the isolated village of Khuzdar, at approximately 07:40 local time (02:40 GMT), the bus carrying about 40 schoolchildren detonated, according to authorities who spoke to the BBC.
According to police, three of the five individuals slain are youngsters. Images of the burned-out remains of a big bus with backpacks strewn all over it are making the rounds on social media.
Although no group has taken credit for the incident thus far, human rights abuses and a protracted insurgency have long afflicted Balochistan, a volatile province in the southwest of the country.
Mohsin Naqvi, Pakistan’s interior minister, denounced the act as “sheer barbarism” and referred to the perpetrators as “beasts who target children” in an effort to cause instability in the nation.
Although there is no proof, the military has charged that India, a neighbour, and its allies in Balochistan were responsible for the blast.
A two-week deadly confrontation between India and Pakistan has just ended after a militant attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir.
India launched a series of strikes on locations in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir after Pakistan denied any role in the assaults.
A train siege in the isolated Sibi area of Balochistan earlier in March claimed the lives of about four military troops and 21 civilians.
The Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), a separatist organisation that has fought for independence for decades, was responsible for that incident.
Authorities in Pakistan and a number of Western nations, such as the US and the UK, have classified the BLA as a terrorist organisation.
It has also been accused of being a “Indian proxy” by the nation’s military in the past, a charge the BLA has denied.
Baloch activists, however, have also charged Pakistan’s security forces with their own crimes.
They claim that for the past 20 years, Pakistan’s security forces have killed, tortured, and abducted thousands of ethnic Baloch people in operations against a separatist insurgency that has lasted for decades, or they have arrested them without following the proper legal procedures.
Sources: BBC news
