QUETTA: Five security personnel and two civilians lost their lives and 25 others, including eight policemen, suffered injuries in a suicide attack near the GPO Chowk area here on Tuesday evening.

The two civilians killed were passing through the area when the suicide bomber blew himself up near a police truck. The banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan claimed responsibility for the attack, saying its suicide bomber targeted a police contingent returning from duty at the Balochistan Assembly building.

Officials said the truck was parked on Circular Road near GPO Chowk to take personnel of the Rapid Response Group (RRG) of Balochistan Constabulary back to the police lines. The bomber rushed to the truck and detonated his suicide vest near it, killing three security personnel on the spot and injuring 25 others. Two others died on way to hospital.

The attack took place when the assembly session was over and most of the legislators and other officials had passed the area. The place of the attack is close to the Grammar School and away from the assembly building.

“It was a suicide attack and the police truck was the target,” Abdul Razzaq Cheema, Deputy Inspector General of Quetta, told Dawn, adding that the bomber detonated his suicide vest when the RRG men were sitting in the truck.

“Two legs and the upper part of the head of the suicide bomber were found at the site,” he said.

Soon after the blast, a heavy contingent of Frontier Corps, police and other law enforcement agencies rushed to the site and cordoned off the area. The bodies and the injured were taken to the Civil Hospital.

“We received six bodies and 23 injured,” Dr Wasim Baig, a spokesman for the hospital, told Dawn, adding that the condition of four injured was serious.

“Due to the assembly session the vicinity of the Balochistan Assembly was completely cordoned off and a heavy contingent of security personnel deployed there,” Inspector General Moazzam Jah Ansari said at the blast site.

Refuting speculations that the target of the bomber was the assembly building, the IG said the actual point of the blast was completely in opposite direction of the assembly. “The attack occurred almost an hour after the assembly proceedings that indicates that the target was the police force,” he claimed.

Published in Dawn, January 10th, 2018