A bomb blast in southwestern Pakistan early Friday morning killed at least nine people, including five schoolchildren, and injured 17 others.
Authorities said that a homemade bomb attached to a motorcycle was detonated in Mastung, a district in the violence-affected Balochistan province, apparently targeting a police vehicle near a school.
At least one police officer was among the dead, and several others also sustained injuries.
Officials reported that a police vehicle was transporting personnel to protect polio vaccination teams involved in the ongoing national campaign to immunize children against the paralytic virus.
Pakistan is facing a resurgence of polio cases in 2024. The country has reported 43 infections this year, with 22 occurring in Balochistan, which borders Afghanistan.
The provincial government and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, in separate statements, condemned the violence as a “terrorist attack.”
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing in Balochistan, renowned for its abundant natural resources, where several ethnic Baloch separatist groups routinely target security force members and government installations.
On Tuesday, gunmen attacked workers at the site of a dam in the sparsely populated province’s Panjgur district, killing five and wounding two others. The outlawed Baloch Liberation Army, or BLA, claimed responsibility for that attack.
Last month, heavily armed assailants stormed a coal mine in another district and massacred 21 coal workers.
BLA, listed as a global terrorist organization by the United States, and other allied insurgent groups claim to be fighting for Balochistan’s independence.
They have also targeted China-funded projects in the province and Chinese nationals working on them, alleging Beijing is assisting Islamabad in exploiting the region’s resources. Both countries reject the charges and label insurgents as enemies of the development in impoverished Balochistan.
Polio teams targeted
Earlier this week, militants in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which sits on the Afghan border, killed two police officers guarding polio vaccinators going door-to-door.
Islamist militants, commonly known as the Pakistani Taliban, are believed to be targeting polio teams in northwestern districts, suspecting them of spying for the government.
The Pakistani government launched its weeklong vaccination campaign on Monday, aiming to administer polio drops to more than 45 million children nationwide.
Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only countries where polio continues to be endemic and paralyze children. The World Health Organization has reported 66 polio infections this year: 43 from Pakistan and 23 from Afghanistan — up from six each in both countries in 2023.
