QUETTA: An alleged suicide bomber was killed by residents of Hazara Town in Quetta, the capital of Balochistan on Saturday.

Capital City Police Officer Quetta, Mir Zubair Mehmood told Dawn.com that a suspected suicide bomber traveling on foot was killed by residents of Hazara Town shortly before Iftar.

He said residents tried to stop the suspected bomber from approaching a mosque they were guarding but he refused to do so. “Residents then fired and killed him on the spot,” he said.

Mehmood said a suicide jacket and a hand grenade were recovered from his possession.

“A major terrorist attack was averted,” he claimed.

Another police official, DIG Operations Fayyaz Sumbal, said the bomber, who had strapped explosives around his body, could not explode himself because of timely action by the volunteers.

“One of the volunteers hit the bomber's head with a brick while another opened fire on him, killing him on the spot,” Sumbul told a foreign news agency.

He confirmed that the suicide jacket recovered from the attacker had been safely defused. The body of the bomber was shifted to Combined Military Hospital for postmortem, he said.

A large number police and paramilitary Frontier Corps (FC) personnel reached the spot and started investigation into the incident.

Quetta has witnessed a recent surge in incidents of violence, with sectarian militants repeatedly targeting the Hazara Shia community in several bombings and gun-attacks.

On Monday, two youths belonging to the minority community were gunned down in an apparent targeted killing on Shahrah-i-Iqbal.

On July 15, four men belonging to the community were killed when gunmen sprayed bullets on their vehicle on Masjid road area.

On June 30, a deadly suicide bombing at an Imambargah killed 30 members of the minority community. The banned Lashkar-i-Jhangvi had claimed responsibility for the blast, one of a series of bombings this year by the extremist sectarian outfit targeting the Hazaras.

The city also saw the country’s two bloodiest attacks so far this year.

A giant bomb planted in a water tanker being towed by a tractor killed 90 Shia Hazaras in February, while another suicide bombing at a snooker club in January killed 92 others.

Both of those bombings were also claimed by the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi.

For an in-depth look at the condition of the Hazara community in Quetta, click here.