Bomb blast in southwest Pakistan kills two police officers

ISLAMABAD — A bomb explosion in Pakistan’s violence-hit southwestern Baluchistan province ripped through a police vehicle Saturday, killing at least two officers and wounding as many others.

Abdul Hameed, an area police officer, told VOA by phone that the attack occurred on a main highway passing through Kuchlak near the provincial capital of Quetta. He said that a homemade bomb targeted a police mobile unit and that an investigation into the incident was underway. There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the deadly bombing in the natural resources-rich Pakistani province, where separatist ethnic Baluch groups routinely target security forces. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif condemned Saturday’s attack on the police as a terrorist act, his office said in a statement in Islamabad. A daylong series of insurgent attacks rattled Baluchistan last month, killing more than 50 civilians and security personnel. The outlawed Baluch Liberation Army, the largest of all the separatist groups active in the province, claimed responsibility for orchestrating the violence, which targeted security installations and passenger vehicles. The BLA, designated as a global terrorist group by the United States, has lately intensified its attacks in Baluchistan. The province shares Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan and Iran and hosts major China-funded infrastructure projects..