QUETTA, July 21: Three employees of the Oil and Gas Development Company and a rickshaw driver were killed in a bomb blast in Dera Allahyar town, about 300 kilometres east of here, on Thursday.

Three people were injured. An OGDC vehicle carrying six employees, including two engineers, was hit by the blast, a senior police officer told Dawn.

A spokesman for the outlawed Baloch Republican Army claimed responsibility for the attack.

Sources said that the bomb had been planted in a rickshaw parked on the bypass linking Dera Allahyar with Sindh. When the OGDC vehicle coming from the Uch gas field reached the bypass the bomb was detonated by remote control.

The powerful explosion blew up the vehicle.

Police and Frontier Corps personnel reached the area, retrieved the bodies and took the injured to the district hospital.

“A rickshaw which was passing through the area was also destroyed and its driver was killed,” Javed Gharshin, District Police Officer of Dera Allahyar said, adding that the blast had shaken the town.

“Around 30 to 35 kilograms of explosives were used in the blast,” bomb disposal squad officials said.

The dead were identified as Engineers Amjid Ali Yousufzai and Shafiq Ahmed Soomro, OGDC driver Mohammad Nawaz Khosa and rickshaw driver Khuda Bakhsh Lashari.