At least five people, including three children, were killed in southwestern Pakistan’s Balochistan province on Wednesday after a suicide car bomber struck a school bus, officials said. The attack injured 38 others, police officials said.
The attack took place on the outskirts of the city of Khuduzar and targeted a bus transporting children to their military-run school in the restive Pakistani province, local deputy commissioner Yasir Iqbal said.
“The school bus belonged to Army Public School as it was picking children in the morning when it was attacked by the suicide bomber,” he told Al Jazeera.
Authorities rushed troops to the scene of the attack and cordoned off the area as ambulances transported the victims to hospitals in the city. Preliminary visuals of the suicide car bomb attack showed the mangled remains of a badly damaged bus and debris of the blown up vehicle on the road.
No terror group has immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.
Mohsin Naqvi, Pakistan’s interior minister, strongly condemned the attack and called the perpetrators “beasts” who deserved no leniency and that the enemy had committed an act of “sheer barbarism” by targeting innocent children.
“The enemy attacked innocent children with barbarity. The attack on the school bus is a heinous conspiracy of the enemy to create instability in the country,” he said in a statement.
Pakistan’s military also issued a statement condemning the attack and said the bombing was “yet another cowardly and ghastly attack”. The country’s powerful military institution also blamed India for the attack and said it was planned by the neighbouring nation and executed by “its proxies in Balochistan”.
New Delhi has not issued a comment on Pakistan’s allegations so far.
Pakistan prime minister Shehbaz Sharif also expressed his condolences and blamed India but did not provide any evidence to back his claim at a time bilateral ties are already strained between the two countries.
“The attack on a school bus by terrorists backed by India is clear proof of their hostility toward education in Balochistan,” Mr Sharif said, vowing that the government would bring the perpetrators to justice.
Balochistan, home to the country’s ethnic Baloch minority, has been at the centre of long-running insurgency movement with armed attacks carried out by several separatist groups, including the banned Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) which has been designated a terrorist group by the US in 2019.
Earlier this week, the BLA vowed more attacks on the “Pakistani army and its collaborators” and said its goal is to “lay the foundation for a peaceful, prosperous and independent Balochistan”.
In its one of the deadliest recent attacks which killed 33 people, the BLA claimed responsibility for an assault on a train carrying hundreds of passengers in Balochistan in March.
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