8 injured in bomb blast in Pakistan’s Balochistan province

PTI, Sep 8, 2022, 4:25 PM IST

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Karachi: At least eight people were injured in a bomb blast in Pakistan’s restive Balochistan province, police said.

The incident took place on Wednesday night at Quetta’s Mecongi road when an unidentified person on a motorcycle lobbed a hand grenade at a shop, they said.

Eight persons were injured in the attack. The injured were rushed to the civil hospital.

The blast also smashed the glasses of the shop. Panic prevailed in the area after the blast, police said.

The volatile Balochistan province regularly witnesses attacks on security personnel, installations, and citizens. However, there has been a drop in terror attacks in the last month due to the torrential rains and flash floods which have left many areas submerged in water.

According to Quetta-based senior journalist Wahid Baloch, the destruction caused by the rains and floods had put a halt to terror activities in the province for the last month but the resumption of the terror attacks ”appeared to be an attempt of the militants to remind everyone that we are back”.

He said people are already struggling to live in tents and are short on essential supplies and these terror attacks will only make their life more miserable.

Abdul Haq Umrani, a senior police official, said that due to the flood situation in the province they did not have to deal with militancy for a while now, ”but we all knew that this was just a temporary phase”.

Over 300 people were killed due to flood-related incidents in Balochistan. Many highways and railway tracks connecting Quetta and other major cities like Gwadar to the rest of Pakistan were also cut off due to the damage and destruction caused by the floods, which also destroyed livestock, feed, and agriculture.

According to the provincial Disaster Management Authority, thousands of people in the province have been left homeless as the floods washed away or destroyed entire villages and even houses in towns and cities.

Affected people have been going without essential services like electricity, medicines, clean drinking water, and internet for weeks now as the authorities with the help of the Pakistan Army and Navy are trying to restore normalcy in the province.

A government official said that work on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor projects in the province has also been hit by the flood and it will take some time before they are restored properly.

Over 1,200 people have been killed so far in rain-related incidents in Pakistan since mid-June when the monsoon season began.