QUETTA, Pakistan (AP) — A powerful bomb exploded near a railway track as a train carrying passengers passed through the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta on Sunday, wounding more than two dozen people, officials said.
The force of the explosion caused two of the train cars to overturn and catch fire, sending thick black smoke into the air, according to footage shared online.
The attack happened in an area where security forces are usually stationed, badly damaging several nearby buildings and smashing more than a dozen vehicles parked along the road, according to witnesses and images circulating on social media.
Doctors at local hospitals said they received more than 30 wounded people, several of them in critical condition.
Balochistan government official Babar Yousafzai said authorities were still investigating the blast, but gave no further details.
Quetta is the capital of insurgency-hit Balochistan province.
The oil- and mineral-rich province has long been the scene of a low-level insurgency, with separatist groups such as the outlawed Baloch Liberation Army, or BLA, demanding independence from Pakistan’s central government. The insurgents have frequently targeted security forces, government installations and civilians in the province and elsewhere in the country.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but suspicion was likely to fall on the BLA, which has claimed responsibility for similar attacks in the past.
“We strongly condemn the targeting of innocent civilians and are deeply saddened by the loss of precious human lives. Terrorist elements deserve no leniency,” said Shahid Rind, spokesperson to the Balochistan chief minister
Balochistan Chief Minister Sarfraz Bugti’s spokesman Shahid Rind said.
He said following the explosion, a medical emergency was declared at hospitals in Quetta and that an investigation has been launched.
Although Pakistani authorities say they have quelled the insurgency, violence in Baluchistan has persisted.
At least 26 people, including soldiers, were killed in 2024 when a suicide bomber attacked a train station in Balochistan.
