Suicide car bomb rams into school bus in Pak’s Balochistan, 4 children killed

A suicide car bomb hit a school bus in restive southwestern Pakistan, killing 4 children and wounding 38, The Associated Press reported, citing officials.

Yasir Iqbal, a local deputy commissioner, said that the attack took place in Balochistan province’s Khuzdar district when the bus was taking children to the school.

Though no group immediately claimed responsibility for the blast, suspicion is expected to be on ethnic Baloch separatists who often target security forces and civilians in the region, the report added.

Pakistan’s interior minister Mohsin Naqvi expressed strong condemnation for the attack and condoled the deaths of the children. Describing the perpetrators as “beasts” who deserve no leniency, Naqvi said that the enemy had committed an act of “sheer barbarism by targeting innocent children”.

Balochistan has long witnessed insurgency in the region, with several separatist groups staging attacks, including the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA). The United States designated BLA as a terrorist organization in 2019.

This attack comes just days after a car bombing attack near a market in Qillah Abdullah, a city in Balochistan bordering Afghanistan, killed four people.

Earlier on May 6, the Pakistani military said that seven of its soldiers were killed when their vehicle was struck by an improvised explosive device in Balochistan.

They reportedly said that members of the BLA targeted their soldiers’ vehicle in the southwestern province of Baloch.