By Staff Reporter
KHUZDAR: A powerful explosion ripped through a school bus in volatile Balochistan province on Wednesday, killing six people, including four children, and injuring dozens more, officials said.
The terror attack struck in Khuzdar district as the bus, carrying over 40 students, headed toward a military school, local administrator Yasir Iqbal said.
Balochistan Chief Minister Sarfaraz Bugti confirmed the blast claimed the lives of four students, the bus driver, and his assistant, with more than 30 others wounded. The most critically injured were airlifted to the Combined Military Hospital in Quetta.
“These coward terrorists attacked them [school bus] with a vehicle-borne IED and in that attack, 46 children were traveling on that bus, of which four children have been martyred and the rest are injured,” Bugti told reporters. “There was concrete intelligence about such an incident. However, we did not expect that innocent children would be targeted.”
The attack is the latest in a string of violent incidents in Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest province by land but its smallest by population and most economically disadvantaged. With about 15 million residents, the southwestern region has long been a hotspot for a decades-old insurgency led by separatist groups like the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), which was behind a March attack that killed 31 people by blowing up a railway track and taking train passengers hostage. No group has yet claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s bombing, though suspicion is likely to fall on such factions.
Tensions between nuclear-armed neighbors Pakistan and India are high after they struck a ceasefire on May 10 following their most intense military confrontation in decades.
Both countries accuse the other of supporting militancy on each other’s soil — a charge both deny.
The latest military escalation began with a April 26 attack in Pahalgam, a town in occupied Kashmir, which India swiftly blamed on Pakistan without substantiating evidence. On May 6 night, Indian air strikes hit targets in Pakistan’s Punjab province and Azad Kashmir, killing civilians. Pakistan retaliated, downing six Indian jets, intercepting drones, and striking Indian airbases. The tit-for-tat ended only after US intervention on May 10 secured a ceasefire, though India has kept up an aggressive posture while Pakistan has urged dialogue to avert further spirals.
Bugti linked the attack to a broader pattern of terrorism, saying those responsible would meet the same fate as perpetrators of previous incidents, including the Nushki attack and the train bombing. “The government and the state will hunt down each and every one of those responsible and send them to hell,” he said.
Officials pointed fingers at India, saying the attack was orchestrated by New Delhi through its proxies. “Terrorists are proxies of India… These people take money from India to target innocent citizens,” Bugti said. “The enemy has stooped so low as to choose soft targets like innocent children.”
The military’s media wing, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), in a strongly worded statement said India had unleashed proxies to sow terror in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, targeting “soft targets such as innocent children and civilians” after failing militarily.
“In yet another cowardly and ghastly attack planned and orchestrated by [the] terrorist state of India and executed by its proxies in Balochistan, [an] innocent school-going children bus was targeted today in Khuzdar,” the ISPR said. “[The] use of terrorism as a state policy by the Indian political government is abhorrent and reflective of their low morality and disregard for basic human norms.”
The military promised to “hunt down and bring to justice” those involved while exposing “the heinous face of India” globally. “Pakistan Armed Forces, with the support of a brave Pakistani nation, stand united to uproot Indian-sponsored terrorism from Pakistan in its all manifestations.”
President Asif Ali Zardari called the attack a “heinous and inhuman crime,” lamenting the deaths children including sixth-grader Sania Soomoro, seventh-grader Hifza Kousar, and tenth-grader Esha Saleem. “We will completely eliminate Indian-backed terrorists,” the president said.
The bombing drew swift condemnation from foreign mission. Natalie Baker, the US Chargé d’Affaires in Pakistan, called it a “brutal, unconscionable attack on a school bus.” “The murder of children is beyond comprehension. We grieve with the families who lost loved ones, and our thoughts are with those recovering. No child should ever fear going to school.”
The Chinese Embassy in Pakistan, representing a nation heavily invested in Balochistan’s mining projects and deep seaport, also condemned the attack. “We are saddened to hear that a school bus was attacked by terrorists in Balochistan today,” it said in a statement on X. “China firmly opposes all forms of terrorism,” it added, offering “deep condolences to the victims and sincere sympathies to the bereaved families.”
UNICEF expressed horror at the “devastating violence,” saying, “This needless suffering must end. Enough is enough. Children are not, and must never be, the targets of violence.”
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