Fourteen people were killed and 16 others received injures in a powerful blast that flattened a road-side restaurant in the town of Dera Allah Yar in Jaffarabad District on Sunday, some 400 kilometres south-east of Quetta.
Police arrested four suspects in connection with the attack, responsibility for which was claimed by newly surfaced Baloch Liberation Tigers. A spokesman for the militant outfit who introduced himself as Miran Baloch said they had attacked the restaurant because it was decorated with national flags for Independence Day.
The bomb went off inside the restaurant on the main Quetta-Jacobabad National Highway when people were having lunch. The blast completely destroyed the two-storey building, razing it to the ground. District Police Officer Javed Gharsheen told Pakistan Today that militants had planted an explosive device inside the Bismillah Hotel, one of the three hotels on National Highway in Dera Allah Yar opened in the holy month of Ramadan to serve food to travelers and patients.
He said four suspects had been rounded up and were being interrogated. He said the bomb was remote-controlled and contained around 12kg of explosives. Gharsheen told Pakistan Today that police and Frontier Corps had found another 10kg bomb planted at DC Chowk, close to residential block of government officers, and defused it.
