At least 5 killed in bomb blast at Pakistan rail station
A Baluchistan Liberation Army (BLA) guerrilla fighter stands guard near a BLA camp in the scrubland of Bolan, a two-hour drive from Quetta, capital of the Pakistan province of Baluchistan.
At least five people were killed and 20 injured when a bomb exploded at a crowded railway station in western Pakistan on Wednesday, police say.
According to the BBC, the device is said to have gone off at 23.30 local time (11.30 EST) as passengers were getting off a train at Sibi railway station in Pakistan’s impoverished Balochistan province.
Police officials told the Agence France Presse that the dead included a railway police constable and a young child.
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There has no been immediate claim of responsibility, but Balochistan suffers from attacks by Taliban-linked Islamists and an insurgency being waged by ethnic Baloch separatists seeking greater autonomy for the oil- and gas- rich region.
According to CNN, tens of thousands of people have died in sectarian conflict between majority Sunni and minority Shi’ite Muslim groups and in government rebellions in Balochistan since the 1980s, while human rights groups have also accused Pakistan’s army of carrying out extra-judicial executions, abductions and mass arrests as part of its offensive against the separatist insurgency.
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