One child was killed and 18 injured which included other children and women, in a blast near the New Sariab police station in Quetta on Saturday.
The bomb, planted in a rickshaw, exploded when a security forces vehicle was passing through the area. The blast left nearby shops and a hotel damaged.
SP Imran Qureshi said “the militants targeted the vehicle of Frontier Corps (FC) through an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) on Quetta’s Sariab road area”, adding that the IED had been planted in a rickshaw parked on the roadside.
“There was a powerful blast when a FC vehicle was passing by in the area,” Qureshi stated.
The injured included three FC personnel, women and children. He added that a minor girl succumbed to her injuries on her way to the hospital.
The SP said the intensity of the blast smashed the windows of nearby homes and shops located in the area.
The injured persons were quickly rushed to Quetta Civil Hospital for medical treatment, where an emergency had been declared on basis of the state of injured persons, three of which were said to be in a critical condition.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, however, police suspected Baloch militants operating in the area might have carried out the attack.
Sariab Road is considered to be one of the sensitive areas of Quetta, where militants have targeted security forces for more than a decade.
The explosion happened in the commercial Sohrab area where unarmed civilians including women were shopping.
Balochistan Home Minister Mir Sarfaraz Bugti visited the hospital and announced some seriously injured patients will be be shifted to Karachi for treatment if the need arose.
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