Senior police official, Imam among 15 martyred in Quetta mosque blast

F.P. Report

QUETTA: An explosion at a mosque in Quetta martyred at least 15 people, including a senior police official and a prayer leader on Wednesday, officials said.

The police personnel has been identified as DSP Haji Aman Ullah while the law enforcement agencies have cordoned off the area as investigators search for forensic evidence.

Last month, unidentified armed men gunned down DSP’s son at Saryab Road in Quetta.
More casualties are feared as several others are reportedly injured.

It is immediately not clear what caused the blast which took place at a seminary in Quetta’s Satellite Town.

Meanwhile, military’s media wing ISPR said in a Tweet that the troops of Frontier Corp (FC) Balochistan have reached at the site of incident and carrying out joint search operation with the police.

It also said that the area has been cordoned off and injured had been shifted to the hospital.

“Every possible assistance be given to police & civil administration. Those who targeted innocents in a mosque can never be true Muslim,” ISPR quoted army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa as saying.

The emergency has been declared at all hospitals of Quetta while the authorities have directed the doctors and paramedical staff to be present at their respective duty places.

The mosque blast occurred three days after two men were killed and over a dozen injured – including two soldiers of the paramilitary Frontier Corps (FC) – in a blast near a vehicle of the security forces on McCaughey Road in the provincial capital of Balochistan.

Balochistan has long been wrecked by ethnic, sectarian, militant and separatist violence perpetrated by a potpourri of groups. Pakistani officials have repeatedly blamed “hostile forces” for violence in the province.