Bomb targets Levies vehicle in Sibi

One man was killed on the spot and 27 were injured in the incident

QUETTA: A motorcycle-borne bomb was detonated near a vehicle of Balochistan Levies in the Chakar Road neighbourhood of Sibi on Saturday, killing a man and wounding 27 others, including a woman and a child.

“It was an improvised explosive device (IED) fitted to a motorcycle which was parked next to a grocery store. The bomb was remotely triggered as a Balochistan Levies vehicle drove past,” Mohammed Akram, SHO Sibi city police station, told The Express Tribune.

One man was killed on the spot and 27 were injured – eight of them critically. The Levies vehicle remained unscathed – but three motorcycles parked nearby were damaged in the blast.

Rescuers and police drove the casualties to the Civil Hospital and Combined Military Hospital (CMH) Sibi where a state of emergency was declared. The dead man was identified as Muhammed Umar Khosa, who was in his late 30s. He had travelled to Sibi from his home village to shop. The injured are mostly from Sibi, while some had travelled here from their villages. Medics said the injured received shrapnel wounds from the explosion.

According to the police, the bomb weighed three to four kilogrammes. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the bomb attack, but in the past the banned United Baloch Army (UBA) had claimed credit for two deadly attacks on passenger trains in Sibi.

Balochistan, rich in oil and gas reserves but at the same time the least developed province, has long been plagued by a separatist insurgency, Taliban militancy and sectarian violence. The separatist insurgency became deadlier in 2006 following the killing of Jamhoori Watan Party founder Nawab Akbar Bugti in a military operation in the mountains of Kohlu.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, September 28^th, 2014.