At least 26 people have been killed and 62 injured by a suicide bombing Saturday at a crowded train station in the city Pakistani city of Quettain the western province of Balochistan.
The Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) separatist group has claimed responsibility for the attack, the Pakistani daily has confirmed. Dawn. It was is about a armed movement that has been claiming an autonomous space for two decades. for the country’s Baloch ethnic minority and which for the past few months has been engaged in a campaign of attacks on a scale rarely seen since the beginning of the conflict, such as the string of attacks in August that left more than 70 dead throughout the province.
The chief commissioner of the Quetta Police, Hamza Shafqaat, has explained that. a militiaman “who was carrying a suitcase”. made his way to the station’s ticketing office, where he made detonate a powerful explosive charge which has left this new provisional death toll confirmed by Wasim Baig, spokesman of the provincial health department, to the same media.
Shortly afterwards, the spokesman for police operations in the city, Mohamad Baloch, added that more than about a hundred people were at the station. at the time of the attack and the death toll could rise in the last hours because many of the wounded are in critical condition. “The explosion occurred just before the departure of an express bound for the city of Peshawar,” the official added in statements to the network GEO TV. Among the dead, according to the authorities, there are “numerous” members of the security forces but they have not yet given an exact figure.
In the section on first reactions, the the country’s acting president, Yousaf Raza Gillani, has condemned unequivocally condemned an attack perpetrated by “enemies of humanity” and pledged immediate assistance to the survivors and families of the victims of the attack.