International
Amir Hussain/Reuters
A bomb attack killed at least 13 passengers and wounded 35 others Tuesday on a train in southwestern Pakistan’s Baluchistan province, home to a low-level separatist insurgency that is among the chronic security problems undermining stability in the nuclear-armed nation.
The separatist United Baluch Liberation Army claimed responsibility for the bombing. The group’s spokesman, Mureed Baluch, said the attack was retaliation for a military operation Monday in which Pakistani security forces said they had killed 30 separatists in one of the biggest clashes in months in the gas-rich province.
Tuesday’s bomb went off on the Rawalpindi-bound Jaffar Express in a carriage reserved for men, in the town of Sibi, 75 miles southeast of the provincial capital of Quetta. Two carriages of the train caught fire after the blast but the fire was quickly extinguished, senior police official Mohammad Nazar told Agence France-Presse. He said the bodies of the victims "have been burnt to charcoal."
The bomb went off after the train reached the Sibi station and passengers were boarding and disembarking, police officials said.
Federal Minister for Railways Saad Rafiq told Pakistan's Geo TV that initial reports suggest a woman left explosives on the train car, and then got off the train when it arrived at the station. Police officials said explosives may have been concealed in someone's luggage, but they emphasized that authorities were still investigating.
The United Baluch Liberation Army accuses the government of stripping the province's natural resources and leaving its people mired in poverty. They say government-backed death squads routinely abduct, torture and execute ethnic Baluch people, accusations echoed by human rights campaigners. Pakistani security forces deny violating human rights.
Wire services
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