Quetta, Pakistan // Two explosions targeting military personnel on a passenger train killed at least six people and wounded 19 others in Pakistan’s troubled Balochistan province on Friday.
The attack, claimed by the separatist Baloch Liberation Army, came as the Rawalpindi-bound Jaffer Express was passing the town of Much, 55 kilometres east of Balochistan’s provincial capital Quetta.
“The explosions damaged two passenger carriages and killed six people besides wounding 19 others,” said senior Pakistan railways official Imtiaz Ahmad.
“We have rushed the rescue teams to the accident site,” said provincial home secretary Akbar Harifal.
Oil and gas rich Balochistan borders Iran and Afghanistan, and has been roiled for years by violent separatist, sectarian and Islamist insurgencies.
The Pakistani military is accused of widespread abuses in the fight against the insurgents, which it denies.
A spokesman for the Baloch Liberation Army said the attack had targeted “military personnel who travel to Rawalpindi by this train”.
Balochistan is also the site of China’s ambitious US$46 billion (Dh168bn) China-Pakistan economic corridor infrastructure project linking its western province of Xinjiang to the Arabian Sea via Pakistan.
Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif “strongly condemned the attack and directed authorities concerned to find the culprits and bring them to task immediately”, his officesaid.
* Agence France-Presse
