Pakistan | Separatist attack leaves at least 26 dead

(Quetta) An explosion claimed by Baloch separatists left 26 people dead on Saturday, including 14 soldiers, on a platform at the main station in Balochistan, a bustling province in the southwest of Pakistan, according to a new hospital report.

“Fourteen members of the army and twelve civilians were killed,” said Doctor Wasim Baig, spokesperson for the Sandeman regional hospital in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan, which borders Afghanistan and Iran. A previous report reported 25 killed.

In addition, 46 soldiers and police officers and 14 civilians were injured, he added.

The Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), one of the main Baloch separatist groups, claimed responsibility for the explosion which blew out the huge tin shelter supposed to protect travelers from the sun or rain at the Quetta railway station.

Firefighters, rescuers and passengers are busy moving the bundles abandoned by travelers under the guard of members of the security forces, automatic rifles in hand.

“Tea at the station”

Pools of blood and ripped backpacks from which tattered clothes emerge bear witness to the violence of the explosion.

Mohammed Oumer, hospitalized for injuries, was preparing to enter the station to leave by train for his village.

“But as soon as we arrived, there was an explosion and I found myself injured and in hospital,” he told AFPTV.

Mohammed Irfan had to go and identify the bodies of his uncle and another relative.

“When we woke up, we learned that there had been an explosion at the station,” he says. “Then we discovered that my uncle and this other relative had gone to the station for tea. »

The toll is particularly high in Balochistan where armed attacks and attacks are frequent.

In a statement, the BLA said that one of its brigades targeted “a unit of the Pakistani army which was returning to Punjab via the railway station after training at the infantry school”.

The BLA regularly claims deadly attacks against law enforcement and Pakistanis from other provinces.

It particularly attacks the Punjabis who constitute the largest of Pakistan’s six main ethnic groups and are seen as dominating the ranks of the army, engaged in the battle against the separatists.

At the end of August, the BLA claimed responsibility for coordinated attacks by dozens of attackers that left at least 39 dead, one of the worst tolls in this region.

“Suicide bombing”

The police say they are working to determine how the separatists organized this explosion.

“At first, it seemed to us that an explosive had been planted, hidden in abandoned luggage, but now we think it was a suicide attack,” said local police official Mohammed Baloch. , to journalists in Quetta.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif denounced “terrorists who attack innocent people”, assuring that they would “pay a high price” after this attack.

The explosion took place around 8:45 a.m. at the Central railway station in Quetta, the capital of Balochistan, where passengers were waiting on a platform.

The official APP agency reports that two trains were preparing to leave when the explosion took place, near a ticket sales counter.

The largest province in Pakistan, Balochistan is also the poorest province in Pakistan, despite its significant gas and mining resources, over which separatists claim control.

Many of the extraction projects are financed and operated by foreign countries, notably neighboring China, which armed separatist factions regularly target, accusing them of hoarding wealth without sharing it with the local population.