Pakistan bus blast kills 15 women's university students; 11 dead in hospital blast

QUETTA: At least 25 people were killed in troubled southwest Pakistan on Saturday when militants blew up a bus carrying women students and attacked a hospital treating survivors, officials said.

A bomb attack on a bus in Quetta, capital of the restive Baluchistan Provice, killed 14 women students, and another 11 people died in a blast at a city hospital around 90 minutes later.

The second attack hit the emergency ward of the city's Bolan Medical Complex where the wounded were taken and was followed by a gun battle with militants holed up inside the hospital.

The siege lasted for several hours and ended when security forces stormed the building.

Quetta was the scene two of the bloodiest attacks in Pakistan this year, both targeting Shiite Muslims, and the student victims were members of a women's university popular with the minority community.

Interior minister Chaudhry Nisar said the bus bomb killed 14 students and wounded 19.

"As casualties were being brought to the hospital terrorists had taken position inside the hospital building," he told reporters.

"They opened fire on on administration and police officials who arrived at the hospital.One suicide bomber blew himself up in the hospital."

Nisar said he was unable to give exact casualty figures for the hospital attack, but Abdul Wasey, spokesman for the paramilitary Frontier Corps earlier said 11 were killed and 17 wounded in the bombing.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attacks but Quetta is a focal point for sectarian violence between majority Sunni Muslims and minority Shiites, who account for 20 percent of Pakistan's 180 million population.

A giant bomb planted in a water tanker being towed by a tractor killed 90 Shiite Hazaras in February, while another suicide bombing at a snooker club in January killed 92 others.

Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a militant group officially banned by the government in 2002, claimed responsibility for both attacks.

The bus targeted in Saturday's attack was from Sardar Bahadur Khan Women's University, which is located close to a Shiite Hazara neighbourhood in Quetta, and many Hazaras are students.

Baluchistan, which borders Iran and Afghanistan, is rife with Islamist militancy and a regional insurgency waged by separatists demanding political autonomy and a greater share of profits from the region's natural resources

Overnight, separatist militants blew up a historic building in Baluchistan linked to Pakistan's founding father, razing its structure to the ground.

The attackers armed with automatic weapons entered the 19th century wooden Ziarat Residency after midnight and planted several bombs, senior administration official Nadeem Tahir told AFP.

Source: Times of India

 

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