QUETTA: Two Frontier Corps (FC) personnel were injured in an explosion on Quetta’s Sariab Road on Monday, an FC spokesperson said.
The personnel were on routine patrol in a village when the bomb — fitted in a motorcycle on the side of the road — was detonated remotely as they approached the site, the spokesperson said.
The injured officials have been shifted to the FC hospital, he added.
A large number of security personnel along with a bomb disposal squad reached the site immediately after the explosion, he said, adding that the area was cordoned off and a search operation was initiated.
There has been an uptick in violence in Balochistan with several attacks and explosions reported since the start of the year.
At least 13 terrorists were killed and seven security personnel, including an officer, martyred during armed attacks on two security forces’ camps in the province’s Naushki and Panjgur districts last week.
Balochistan Home Minister Mir Zia Langove had said at the time that several threats had been issued in February. “We had threats from Daesh and so-called nationalists,” he had said.
Last month, 17 people, including two policemen had been injured in a grenade attack in Dera Allahyar town of Jaffarabad district.
Prior to that, three Levies Force personnel along with a Bugti clan elder were martyred and eight others injured in twin bomb blasts in Sui area of Dera Bugti.
Over the weekend, Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid — while making an apparent reference to the recent rise in terrorism incidents and attacks on security forces — said that incidents that had taken place over the past week could further increase.
“I do not want to comment on the talks here. The Taliban have intervened but the incidents that occurred in the past week could increase. They could rise [further],” he said while addressing a ceremony held in Rawalpindi on Saturday.
Rashid did not elaborate further on this comment, which was, apparently, also an allusion to the end of a month-long ceasefire between the government and proscribed Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in December last year. –Agencies –Agencies
