Pakistan: At least 25 die, 46 injured in Quetta railway station suicide blast
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: On the day Prime Minister Mohammed Shehbaz Sharif belatedly congratulated US President-elect Donald Trump on social media platform “X”, banned in Pakistan, at least 25 people were killed, and 46 others were injured, in a suicide blast at Quetta railway station, the media reported on Saturday.
The Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), an ethnic separatist group in the region, has claimed responsibility for the blast.
A suspected suicide blast by an ethnic militant group rocked the crowded railway station in Pakistan’s restive Baluchistan province on Saturday morning, killing 25 people and injuring 46 others.
The victims included at least 14 soldiers, the police said. CCTV footage showed dozens of people waiting on the platform when the blast ripped through Quetta’s main railway station.
Bodies were seen scattered across the platform and the roof was blown away. There was blood everywhere as rescue workers went through abandoned luggage to find survivors, the reports said.
The blast occurred when the Jaffer Express was about to depart for Peshawar, said a senior police official, adding that it seemed to be a suicide blast.
Reports suggest the explosion occurred at the railway station’s booking office. Law enforcement teams immediately secured the area and took the injured to the civil hospital in Quetta, said the provincial government spokesperson Shahid Rind.
Officials said at least 46 injured were brought to the hospital in the aftermath of the blast. The hospital declared an emergency and called additional staff to attend to the injured.
“The blast targeted army personnel from the Infantry School,” said Mouzzam Jah Ansari, the Inspector-General of Police in Balochistan.
Balochistan Chief Minister Sarfraz Bugti ordered an immediate probe and condemned the attack as “a horrific act” that targeted innocent civilians. “The terrorists’ target now are innocent people, laborers, children, and women. Those targeting innocent people do not deserve mercy,” the newspaper Dawn quoted him as saying.
The blast comes as Pakistan grapples with a rise in terror attacks by ethnic militant groups. About three months ago, a wave of attacks on police stations and highways in Balochistan claimed at least 73 lives.
