By Saleem Ahmed
QUETTA, Pakistan (Reuters) -At least three children were among five people killed 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 have sustained injuries, said Yasir Iqbal, the administrator of Khuzdar district, where the incident took place.
Pakistan’s military and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif swiftly released statements condemning the violence and accusing “Indian terror proxies” of involvement in the attack. They did not share evidence linking the attack to New Delhi.
“Planners, abettors and executors of this cowardly Indian sponsored attack will be hunted down and brought to justice,” the military’s media wing said.
India’s government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Tensions between India and Pakistan remain high after they agreed a ceasefire on May 10. Diplomats have warned the truce is fragile, following the most dramatic escalation of hostilities between the nuclear-armed neighbours in decades.
Both accuse the other of supporting militancy on each other’s soil – a charge both capitals deny. The latest military escalation, in which the two countries traded missiles, was sparked after India accused Pakistan of supporting a militant assault on tourists in the Indian portion of the contested region of Kashmir. Islamabad denies any involvement.
In Wednesday’s suicide attack in Balochistan, at least three children and two adults were killed, the army said. Local television showed the images of three girls from middle and high school grades who were killed.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the blast, which was reminiscent of one of the deadliest militant attacks in Pakistan’s history when an attack on a military school in the northern city of Peshawar in 2014 killed more than 130 children.
That attack was claimed by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, an ultra-radical Islamist group.
Attacks by separatist groups in Balochistan have risen in recent years. The Baloch Liberation Army, a separatist militant group, blew up a railway track and took passengers from a train hostage in March, killing 31.
(Reporting by Saleem Ahmed, Saud Mehsud, and Asif Shahzad; Writing by Sudipto Ganguly and Charlotte Greenfield; Editing by YP Rajesh, Raju Gopalakrishnan,Saad Sayeed, Ros Russell)
