Bomb Kills Five In Troubled Pakistani Border Town

HannibalGore · #1 ● 03-23-2021, 04:11 PM

QUETTA, Pakistan (Reuters) - Three people have been killed and 13 others injured in a bomb blast near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

The blast occurred in the town of Chaman, which is one of the two main crossing points between Afghanistan and Pakistan and used by thousands of people daily.

The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the blast in a statement shared with Reuters.

"It was a remote-controlled bomb planted on a motorcycle," district deputy commissioner Tariq Javed Mengal told Reuters, adding that the blast targeted a vehicle in which a senior police officer was traveling.

Mengal said the blast occurred as the police vehicle passed by. A shopkeeper, a passerby and a child were killed, and two security personnel were among the 13 injured.

The injured were immediately taken to Chaman district hospital, and nine were taken to a hospital in the provincial capital of Quetta, a police official told Reuters. The senior police officer who was apparently the target of the blast was not injured. Security forces launched a search operation in the area following the incident.

The attack comes amid a sharp rise in violence by the Pakistani Taliban, a group that once used the border region to launch attacks inside Pakistan as well as to host militants, including Al Qaeda, operating in neighboring Afghanistan and around the world.

The group was largely in disarray following a major Pakistani military ground operation, but last year several splinter groups announced a new alliance and have since stepped up attacks against security personnel and civilians.

NEWS:cn.reuters
(https://cn.reuters.com/article/us-pa...-idUSKBN2BF2HO)