At least 10 Pakistani soldiers have been killed in an IED attack in Kalat, Pakistan, while many are reported to be injured. Unknown persons attacked a Pakistani army vehicle with explosives while it was proceeding for a military operation in the Harboi area.
पाकिस्तान में IED ब्लास्ट, 10 जवानों की मौत और कई घायल
At least 10 people were killed and several others injured when a bomb exploded on a vehicle carrying workers in southwestern Pakistan.
An improvised explosive device (IED) hit a truck in the Harnai area of Balochistan province on Friday, local officials said.
Security forces are battling a decades-old insurgency by separatist groups in impoverished Balochistan, and violence has surged in the border region in the past three years.
“Ten miners were killed in the attack in Harnai district,” senior government official Shahzad Zehri told AFP.
The vehicle was carrying coal miners, and most of the victims were from the country’s northwestern Swat Valley and other areas, officials said.
“An improvised explosive device was planted along the road which went off when the truck carrying coal miners arrived at the site,” a paramilitary official told Reuters news agency. The official, who declined to be identified, said it may have been a remote-controlled device.
Local government official Salim Tareen also told AFP the blast was caused by an IED, adding the victims were on their way to a market when the bomb went off.
Hazrat Wali Agha, the deputy commissioner of the area, told Reuters that 17 miners were in the truck when the bomb exploded.
Several people were injured and rushed to a local hospital. A doctor at the hospital told Reuters two of the injured were in critical condition.
Harnai is more than 160 km (100 miles) from Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province.
In a statement, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif reaffirmed his “commitment to work actively towards eliminating the threat of terrorism from the country”.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
However, the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) is the most active group in the region and often carries out deadly attacks against security forces or Pakistanis from other provinces.
The group has also targeted foreign-financed energy projects and accused outsiders of exploiting the resource-rich region and excluding residents of the poorest part of Pakistan.
Earlier this month, a vehicle carrying troops in a Balochistan town was fired upon by 70 to 80 attackers who had blocked the road.
Another attack in January killed at least six people, including Pakistani paramilitary forces, and injured dozens.
The BLA claimed responsibility for both attacks.
In one of the deadliest attacks in the region last year, BLA separatist fighters killed at least 39 people in “coordinated” attacks that mainly targeted ethnic Punjabis, according to analysts.
Violence has escalated in Pakistan’s border areas since the Afghan Taliban returned to power in Kabul in 2021.
Pakistan has accused the Taliban government of failing to expel fighters who carry out attacks from Afghan soil, a charge it denies.
Last year was Pakistan’s deadliest in a decade, with a surge in attacks that killed at least 1,500 people, including 685 members of the police or security forces, according to the Centre for Research and Security Studies, an Islamabad-based analysis group.
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