A powerful explosion near Zero Point in Khuzdar, Balochistan, targeted a school bus on Wednesday, martyring six, including four students, and injuring dozens of others, the province’s chief minister said, drawing condemnations from across the country.
Terrorists targeted the school bus as it was heading towards the educational institute with more than 40 students on board in the district of Balochistan, which is among the worst terror-hit provinces.
Chief Minister Sarfaraz Bugti told reporters that the six martyred, including four children, the bus driver, and his assistant, while those critically injured were being transported via air to the Combined Military Hospital (CMH) Quetta. Khuzdar’s deputy commissioner said that more than 30 individuals sustained injuries in the blast.
Separately, fourteen individuals injured in the terrorist attack were transferred to Combined Military Hospital (CMH) Quetta. Among them are a woman, a man, and twelve children. The CMH administration has said that some of the injured are in critical condition.
The government has said that Indian-backed militants carried out the attack, coming almost two weeks after the two sides settled a ceasefire to end their most serious conflict in decades.
Security sources identified three of the martyred as grade six student Sania Soomoro, grade seven’s Hifza Kousar, and grade 10’s Esha Saleem.
The military’s media wing, in a statement, said: “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 that after having miserably failed on the battlefield, through these most heinous and cowardly such like acts, Indian proxies have been unleashed to spread terror and unrest in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Having failed following Operation Bunyan-um-Marsoos and being hunted by military and law enforcement agencies, the ISPR said, these Indian terror proxies are being employed as a state tool by India to foment terrorism in Pakistan against soft targets such as innocent children and civilians.
“[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 ISPR noted.
Planners, abettors, and executors of this cowardly Indian-sponsored attack will be hunted down and brought to justice, and the heinous face of India will be exposed in front of the entire world.
“Pakistan Armed Forces, with the support of a brave Pakistani nation, stand united to uproot Indian-sponsored terrorism from Pakistan in its all manifestations.”
‘Concrete intelligence’
Balochistan Chief Minister Bugti, during a press conference in Quetta, strongly condemned the terrorist attack on a school bus in Khuzdar. He revealed that 44 children were on board the bus targeted in the attack. “There was concrete intelligence about such an incident,” said the chief minister, adding, “However, we did not expect that innocent children would be targeted.”
“The children were brutally martyred and injured,” Bugti said. “The enemy has stooped so low as to choose soft targets like innocent children.”
He said they were aware that the enemy could choose Balochistan in an attempt to overcome the humiliation of defeat in warfare. “We will avenge the blood of these children,” the chief minister vowed.
Bugti said that the terrorists involved in past incidents — including the train attack and the Nushki incident — were sent to hell, and those behind this recent tragedy would face the same fate.
