Bombs kill 17 in Pakistan
Saturday, 15 March 2014
QUETTA, Mar 14 (agencies): Bomb blasts killed 17 and wounded 31 people across Pakistan Friday.
In Quetta police chief Abdul Razzaq Cheema said a vehicle carrying security forces appeared to have been the target of the attack killed 10, which occurred outside a college in the centre of the city.
Quetta is the capital of the southwestern province of Baluchistan, which borders Iran and Afghanistan and is rife with separatist and Islamist militants.
The province is also plagued by sectarian bloodshed and Quetta has been hit by numerous bomb attacks in recent years, including two devastating blasts early last year targeting minority Shiite Muslims.
"Ten people were killed and 31 injured. Around eight are in critical condition," Cheema told AFP, adding that eight to 10 kilos of explosives were used in the bomb.
Doctor Rashid Jamal at the government-run civil hospital Quetta confirmed the number of dead and wounded.
Meanwhile: A suicide bomb attack targeting police in northwest Pakistan Friday killed at least seven people, officers said, the latest violence to hit peace talks between the government and Taliban militants.
The blast came in the suburbs of the northwestern city of Peshawar, close to the lawless tribal areas that are a haven for Taliban and Al-Qaeda linked militants.
Dialogue aimed at ending the Islamists' seven-year insurgency, which has claimed thousands of lives, resumed last week with government negotiators saying the process was ready to move to a new phase.
But a ceasefire declared by the Pakistani Taliban on March 1 was shaken just two days later by a major attack on a court complex in Islamabad that left 11 people dead.
The main Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) faction denied that attack, which was claimed by a splinter group, but it nevertheless prompted many observers to question the militants' commitment to dialogue.
Friday's attack in Sarband village on the edge of Peshawar close to the Khyber tribal district came as Taliban negotiators met the TTP leadership to discuss the next steps in the talks process.