Two people were killed and 15 others, including a woman and child, were injured in a bicycle-borne explosion on the busy Double Road in Quetta on Thursday.
Two of the injured are in critical condition.
“A police patrol vehicle was passing by the area when the blast occurred. It seems the militants wanted to target it,” said Mohammed Shaukat, Station House Officer (SHO) Industrial Police Station.
Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Police Syed Mobin Ahmed said police have started investigation into the incident. “All the injured were passersby.”
According to the Bomb Disposal Squad (BDS), around five kilogrammes of explosive material was used in the blast.
The BDS said the Improvised Explosive Device (IED) had been fitted on a bicycle and that the assailants had parked it between two cars parked on Double Road, and detonated it through a remote control.
The blast was powerful enough to be heard up to four kilometres away. It damaged three cars and two motorcycles. No group immediately claimed Thursday’s attack.
Soon after the blast, a heavy contingent of Frontier Corps (FC), police and rescue workers reached the spot and cordoned off the area.
“Two dead bodies and 15 injured people were brought here. Two injured are in critical condition,” said Abdul Rasheed Jamali, medico-legal officer at the hospital. A 22-year-old woman and a 7-year-old child also sustained splinter wounds.
Bodies of the deceased were kept at a morgue for identification.
A large number of people reached the hospital and started looking for their relatives who had gone this area.
SHO Shaukat said the attack could be a work of a banned organisation.
“The modus operandi suggests that a banned organisation is behind the attack,” he added.
It is the second bombing on Double road in the last eight months. Five people had been killed and more than 20 had sustained injuries when on October 31, 2013, the banned Baloch United Army (UBA) had detonated a bomb.