Bus station bombing injures 17 in SW Pakistan

QUETTA, Pakistan, (AFP)

A bomb blast tore through a bus station in Pakistan’s troubled southwestern province of Baluchistan on Friday, injuring at least 17 people, a police officer said.

The explosion hit in Dera Murad Jamali town, 400 kilometres (248 miles) southeast of Quetta, the capital of the oil and gas rich province, which borders Iran and Afghanistan.

“It was an improvised explosive device which ripped through the bus station wounding at least 17 people, one of them seriously,” local police official Naseebullah Khoso told AFP.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the incident, but the province has been rife with militant and sectarian violence.

Hundreds of people have died since an insurgency flared in late 2004 in Baluchistan, where rebels are demanding political autonomy and a greater share of profits from the region’s natural resources.

Pakistan has also recently been hit by a string of Taliban-related bomb blasts, as fears grow that Islamist extremists are exacting revenge for a military offensive against them in three northwest districts.