Suicide bomber hits school bus in Pakistan, killing five, including 3 students

Three children were among five dead when a suicide bomber struck an army school bus in Pakistan's restive Balochistan province, the military said on Wednesday, in an attack Pakistan blamed on Indian proxies.

Around 40 students were on the bus that was headed to an army-run school and several sustained injuries, said Yasir Iqbal, the administrator of Khuzdar district, where the incident took place.

"In yet another cowardly and ghastly attack planned and orchestrated by terrorist state of India and executed by its proxies in Balochistan, innocent school-going children’s bus was targeted today in Khuzdar,” the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) said in a statement.

"As per the initial reports, three innocent schoolchildren0 and two adults have embraced martyrdom and multiple children have sustained injuries,” it added. "After having miserably failed in the battlefield, through these most heinous and cowardly such like acts Indian proxies have been unleashed to spread terror and unrest in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.”

Photos of the students, who were killed in the suicide bombing in Khuzdar.

Earlier, Khuzdar Deputy Commissioner Yasir Iqbal Dashti said that the blast occurred when the school bus was near the Khuzar Zero Point.

The bodies and the injured were taken to the Khuzdar Combined Military Hospital (CMH), from where the seriously injured would be referred to medical facilities in Quetta and Karachi, Dashti said.

People carry pictures of the martyred students as they gather in their memory in Karachi on Wednesday. Reuters

Police, the Frontier Corps (FC) and other law enforcement agencies’ personnel have reached the site of the incident to collect evidence for an investigation.

While a probe was underway, the deputy commissioner said preliminary findings indicated that the attack was a suicide blast.

CONDEMNATION

Pakistan's Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif expressed his condolences and also blamed India, without providing any evidence to support the claim.

"The attack on a school bus by terrorists backed by India is clear proof of their hostility toward education in Balochistan,” Shahbaz said, vowing that the government would bring the perpetrators to justice.

Pakistan’s Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi strongly condemned the attack and expressed deep sorrow over the children’s deaths. He called the perpetrators "beasts” who deserve no leniency, saying the enemy had committed an act of "sheer barbarism by targeting innocent children.”

Balochistan Chief Minister Sarfraz Bugti condemned the incident and said the perpetrators would be brought to justice.

Provincial government spokesperson Shahid Rind denounced the attack as the "hideous face of Indian state-sponsored terrorism”, as well as a "cowardly and inhumane act”.

In a statement, Rind echoed the ISPR’s stance, saying that India was "creating instability in Balochistan to hide its failures”. He called India’s "state-sponsored terrorism a threat to world peace.

Bugti vowed that they will not only expose every terrorist operating in the province, but also "eradicate them completely."