Five of nine schoolchildren were killed in an explosion in Pakistan’s restive Balochistan province

ISLAMABAD/KARACHI: At least nine people, including five children, were killed and 27 others injured when an autorickshaw carrying schoolchildren bore the brunt of a bomb attack targeting a mobile police van in Pakistan’s restive Balochistan province on Friday.

The blast took place at 8.35 am near a girl’s secondary school at Civil Hospital Chowk in Mastung district of the province.

Mastung District Police Officer (DPO) Miandad Umrani confirmed that while seven people, including five schoolchildren, had died on the spot following the blast, one of the injured died at a hospital.

“The number of injured is around 27 and some civilians themselves took some of the injured to hospitals,” he said.

The initial death toll was seven and about 17 injured, but Umrani said the condition of some of the injured was also critical.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, but ethnic Baloch and Taliban terrorists often attack security forces in the province, which has been dealing with a low-level insurgency for about two decades.

“The target of the IED bomb, which was activated via a timer, turned out to be a police van stationed near a hospital and a high school, several meters apart,” he said.

Terrorists used a remote control to detonate explosive material hidden in a parked motorcycle, officials said.

“It was an IED (improvised explosive device) used in the blast, and the target was apparently a police mobile parked near the school,” said Naeem Bazai, commissioner of Kalat division.

The majority of the injured are police officers and civilians, as the children were in the school when the blast occurred.

Separatist groups banned by authorities have stepped up their terror attacks in the past two to three months and recently killed five guards and workers at a dam in Panjgur.

TV footage after the attack showed police officers and other people surrounding a charred vehicle.

Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif and Balochistan Chief Minister Sarfaraz Bugti condemned the blast, saying it was inhumane to harm schoolchildren.

Bugti said terrorists had now joined poor workers in targeting innocent children, in an apparent reference to a recent attack by unknown gunmen on a dam construction site in the province’s Panjgur district, which left five workers dead and two others were injured.

We will avenge the killing of innocent children and people, the Prime Minister said, adding that citizens in urban areas should also be wary of the terrorists.

“The monster of terrorism can only be fought together,” he said.

He added that terrorists had targeted children and considered them soft targets.

In the wake of the blast, a state of emergency was declared in all Quetta hospitals, Geo News reported, quoting the provincial health department spokesperson, adding that all doctors, pharmacists, nurses and other medical staff had been summoned.