At least four children killed in suicide bombing on school bus in Pakistan

At least three of the victims are children, officials say

At least five people have been killed after a suicide car bomber struck a school bus in Pakistan, including three children.

Government officials say 38 others have been wounded in the attack on Wednesday (May 21) in the Balochistan province, in the south-west of the country.

There are fears the death toll will rise further, with several children currently in a critical condition.

Mohsin Naqvi, Pakistan’s interior minister, condemned the attack – describing the perpetrators as ‘beasts’ who deserve no leniency. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack so far.

But the tense Balochistan province has been the scene of a long-running insurgency, with an array of separatist groups staging attacks – including the illegal Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), which was designated a terrorist organisation by the United States in 2019.

Local deputy commissioner Yasir Iqbal said the attack took place in the district of Khuzdar as the bus was taking children to a military school.

Mr Naqvi said those responsible had committed an act of ‘sheer barbarism by targeting innocent children’.

Wednesday’s attack came days after a car bombing killed four people near a market in Qillah Abdullah, also in Balochistan.

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Most of such attacks in the province are claimed by BLA, a group Pakistan claims to be backed by India, which New Delhi denies.

In one of the deadliest such attacks, BLA insurgents killed 33 people, mostly soldiers, during an assault on a train carrying hundreds of passengers in Balochistan in March.

Militant groups are also active in the province and though it is unusual for separatists to target school children in Balochistan, such attacks have been carried out in the restive north-west and elsewhere in the country in recent years.

Most schools and colleges in Pakistan are operated by the government or the private sector, though the military also runs a significant number of institutions for children of both civilians and of serving or retired army personnel.

In 2014, the Pakistani Taliban carried out the country’s deadliest school attack on an army-run institution in the north-western city of Peshawar, killing 154 people, most of them children.

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