Balochistan Chief Minister Sarfaraz Bugti condemned Friday’s bombing in Mastung district, which killed nine people, including five children, and injured 29 others. He bemoaned the fact that terrorists had now begun attacking innocent children in addition to low-income workers.
State station PTV News described Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif as saying that the explosion occurred at a “girls’ high school”, while another tweet by the outlet said the incident occurred “near Girls’ High School Chowk”.
But according to Kalat Division Commissioner Naeem Bazai, the attack happened at approximately 8:35 a.m. close to the Mastung Civil Hospital, which is only a few meters away from the hospital based on Google Maps.
At first, Bazai said that the explosion had killed seven persons, including five youngsters, and injured seventeen more. He went on to say that an improvised explosive device (IED) on a motorcycle that exploded close to a police mobile seemed to have assisted in the detonation.
Deputy Commissioner Mastung Captain (Retired) Baz Muhammad Marri announced later in the evening that nine people had died as a result of the Mastung explosion.
Five girls, one boy, one police officer, and two additional civilians are among the dead, he said. “After completing the required procedures, the bodies were given to the families at Civil Hospital Quetta, Nawab Ghaus Bakhsh Memorial Hospital, and Civil Hospital Mastung.”
According to reports from several hospitals, 29 individuals may have been injured in the explosion, Dr. Wasim Baig, the province health department’s spokesperson, told Dawn.com.
According to Bazai, the assistant commissioner and deputy commissioner were monitoring the hospitals’ conditions. He emphasized that in order to stop any more incidents, the police had roped off the area.
Four police officers were among the injured, Mastung District Police Officer (DPO) Miandad Umrani had earlier told Dawn.com.
He added that the children who passed away were five to ten years old. According to the DPO, the explosion caused damage to a police van and other autorickshaws.
“The Polio team is not the target.”
According to certain sources, the attack was directed at a polio team.
“Our police van was protecting a polio team in the Civil Hospital Chowk area when terrorists targeted it,” Rahmatullah, a local police officer, told Anadolu Agency over the phone.
He stated that while the vaccination team members were unharmed, the attack claimed the life of one police officer and injured four more.
According to the same official, a police van was targeted while it was en route to pick up a polio team. One police officer was murdered and twenty-three people were injured in the attack, according to Reuters.
However, Deputy Commissioner Mastung Marri denied the allegations.
“A police van was attacked by terrorists close to Civil Hospital, where the police mobile was on patrol at the time of the attack,” he stated. “Police teams have been protected by security at several locations in Mastung, but the police van that was targeted was not part of the polio team security.”
“Inhumane” behavior
In reference to a recent attack that claimed the lives of five security officers in Panjgur, Chief Minister Bugti claimed that terrorists had now “targeted innocent children along with poor laborers.”
The chief minister denounced the explosion as “inhumane” in a statement posted on X.
According to CM Bugti, terrorists have targeted children because they are considered a “soft target.”
“We will exact revenge for the killing of innocent children and people,” CM declared, adding that city dwellers also needed to be alert for terrorists.
“Only by working together can we defeat the terrorist monster,” he continued.
According to state-run Radio Pakistan, PM Shehbaz and Acting President Yusuf Raza Gilani also denounced the “bomb blast at a Girls’ High School in Mastung.”
In their individual messages, they conveyed their condolences to the families of the deceased and expressed their profound sorrow at the deaths of children and a police officer in the event.
Declaring that terrorists were the enemies of humanity, Gilani reaffirmed the determination to eradicate terrorism from the nation.
He was cited as adding that the “entire nation stands united to support the security forces and law enforcement agencies to eliminate terrorism.”
The “attack on a school was loud evidence of terrorists’ animosity towards education in Balochistan,” according to Prime Minister Shehbaz.
He claimed that such “cowardly acts of terrorists” could not depress national spirits or sway the administration of Balochistan’s steadfast determination to advance the province’s development and education.
According to the statement, the premier gave the relevant authorities instructions to capture the blast’s culprits and punish them with exemplary measures.
Additionally, he directed that the injured be given access to the greatest medical facilities.
The incident was highly denounced by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP). It was abhorrent to target a neighborhood close to a school and a hospital.
The federal and provincial governments need to take the dramatic increase in militancy in the province very seriously and find and prosecute those responsible. In a post on X, the organization stated that the only viable answer is a long-term political one.
Although no group immediately took credit for the explosion, there has been a notable increase in terrorism-related occurrences in the nation in recent months, especially in the provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan.
According to monthly security statistics, there was a 24% decrease in terror incidents in September compared to August, but there were increases in August and July.
In 2023, 789 terror incidents and counterterrorism operations in Pakistan resulted in 1,524 violence-related deaths and 1,463 injuries. The total number of deaths, including outlaw deaths, is at a six-year high.
The son of Levies officer and PPP leader Khan Muhammad Lotani was killed in a bombing in Khuzdar earlier this month, while the politician was injured when their pickup truck was attacked.
Seven Multan laborers were killed last month when terrorists with automatic guns broke into a Panjgur home that was still under construction. A private construction company’s camp in the Musakhel district was assaulted by armed men a day later, and the cars and equipment there were set on fire. There were no recorded casualties.
A convoy of six coal-laden trucks traveling from Duki coal fields to Punjab was shot at in Ziarat in May, killing one driver and leaving three others missing.
Unidentified attackers in the Mach coal field area executed 11 Shia Hazara coal miners who were resting in their chamber in January 2021 after holding them at gunpoint, blindfolding them, and trussing them up. The murder has been attributed to the extremist Islamic State group.
