Suicide car bomber strikes a school bus in southwestern Pakistan, killing 4 children, officials say

QUETTA, Pakistan (AP) — A suicide car bomber struck a school bus in southwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, killing at least four children and wounding 38 others, a government official, the latest attack in the tense Balochistan province.

The province has been the scene of a long-running insurgency, with an array of separatist groups staging attacks, including the outlawed Balochistan Liberation Army, designated as a terrorist organization by the United States in 2019.

A local deputy commissioner, Yasir Iqbal, said the attack took place in the district of Khuzdar as the bus was transporting children to a military-run school in the city.

No group immediately claimed responsibility, though suspicion is likely to fall on ethnic Baloch separatists, who frequently target security forces and civilians in the region.

Pakistan’s Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi strongly condemned the attack and expressed deep sorrow over the children’s deaths. He called the perpetrators “beasts” who deserve no leniency, saying the enemy had committed an act of “sheer barbarism by targeting innocent children.”

Officials said they fear that the death toll may rise further as several children were listed in critical condition.

Wednesday’s attack came days after a car bombing killed four people near a market in Qillah Abdullah, also in Balochistan.

Most of such attacks in the province are claimed by BLA, which Pakistan says enjoyed the backing of neighboring India — a claim that New Delhi denies. In one of the deadliest such attacks, BLA insurgents killed 33 people, mostly soldiers, during an assault on a train carrying hundreds of passengers in Balochistan in March.

Militant groups are also active in the province and though it is unusual for separatists to target school children in Balochistan, such attacks have been carried out in the restive northwest and elsewhere in the country in recent years.

Most schools and colleges in Pakistan are operated by the government or the private sector, though the military also runs a significant number of institutions for children of both civilians and of serving or retired army personnel.

In 2014, the Pakistani Taliban carried out the country’s deadliest school attack on an army-run institution in the northwestern city of Peshawar, killing 154 people, most of them children.

___

Ahmed reported from Islamabad.