Quetta . At least five people were injured in an explosion near the Quetta Police Lines area on Sunday, rescue officials said. Edhi worker Zeeshan Ahmed, who is leading the rescue operation on the site, told Dawn.com that the injured persons have been moved to the Civil Hospital, Quetta.
He said police and emergency teams have arrived at the site and the area has been cordoned off. Police haven’t issued any statement and the nature of the blast is not clear at the moment. The outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement released on Sunday. It stated that security officials were targeted in the blast. The explosion comes days after a ghastly suicide blast in Peshawar Police Lines area took nearly 80 lives, mostly policemen.
Pakistan has been hit by a wave of terrorism, mostly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, but also in Balochistan and the Punjab town of Mianwali, which borders KP. A terror attack also reached as far as the peripheries of Islamabad.
The TTP, which has ideological linkages with the Afghan Taliban, executed more than 100 attacks last year, most of which happened after August when the group’s peace talks with the Pakistan government began to falter. The ceasefire was formally ended last year on Nov 28 by the TTP.
Last month was the deadliest month since 2018, in which 134 people lost their lives — a 139 per cent spike — and 254 received injuries in at least 44 militant attacks across the country.
