Blast in southwestern Pakistan kills 1 person and wounds 35

QUETTA, Pakistan (AP) — A blast from an improvised explosive device killed one person and wounded 35 others on Saturday in Pakistan’s southwestern city of Turbat, a police official said.

Footage from the scene showed vehicles moving through the city before an explosion and flames engulfed one of them.

Police officer Roshan Baloch said that eight of the wounded were in critical condition, and that the rest were stable. Most of the casualties are soldiers. The device was in a car parked on the side of the road and was detonated remotely, Baloch added.

The chief minister for Balochistan province, Sarfraz Bugti, condemned the attack.

“Those who target innocent people do not deserve to be called human beings,” he said.

A separatist group called the Baloch Liberation Army claimed responsibility for the blast, but gave higher casualty figures. It also said the IED targeted a military convoy.

Balochistan is Pakistan’s largest province but the least populated. It’s also a hub for the country’s ethnic Baloch minority, whose members say they face discrimination by the government.

Balochistan is the scene of a long-running insurgency, with several separatist groups staging attacks, mostly targeting security forces in their quest for independence. It also has other militant groups operating from there.

Also Saturday, in the country’s northwest, gunmen opened fire on government vehicles carrying officials who were on their way to supervise aid trucks heading to a besieged district. Several people were wounded in the assault.

The aid trucks were carrying food, fuel, and medicine for people in the Kurram district, where hundreds have died in recent months in clashes connected to a land dispute.

Authorities shut the roads leading in and out of the district and imposed a communications blackout to contain the fighting. But the measures have deprived the local population of essential items.

The gun attack prompted the halt of the aid convoy, said a spokesman for the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government Muhammad Ali Saif. It came days after elders brokered a ceasefire.