A vehicle carrying a wedding party hit a landmine in Pakistan’s restive south-western province of Baluchistan on Friday, killing 26 people and injuring seven, provincial officials said.
The blast ripped through a trailer being pulled by a tractor on a remote mountain trail near the town of Rakhni, about 300km east of Quetta, Baluchistan government spokesperson Raziq Bugti said.
Officials blamed the attack on ”terrorist” tribal militants who are waging an insurgency to win more autonomy and a greater share of the gas-rich region’s vast natural resources.
”Thirty-five people in the trailer were all travelling to attend a marriage when it hit at least one anti-tank mine and there was a very heavy blast. The vehicle was completely destroyed,” Bugti said. ”We know that 26 people died, seven were injured and two escaped unharmed. There were women and children in the vehicle and we are trying to get the details of how many.”
Tribal militants are trying to disrupt the federal government’s efforts to develop the region, Bugti said.
He added: ”The government of Baluchistan condemns this act of sabotage in which innocent people were killed. Those behind the attack are terrorists and we are dealing with them with an iron hand.”
Bugti said the injured were being shifted to Dera Ghazi Khan city in the neighbouring province of Punjab. Paramilitary troops have sealed off the site of the explosion, he added.
The dirt track where the explosion happened at about 9.30am is often used by army and paramilitary forces and may have been targeted for that reason, officials said.
”The number of casualties and the damage suggest that there could have been more than one landmine, but we have not confirmed that at this stage,” Bugti said.
The victims were mostly from the Bugti tribe, whose chieftain, Nawab Akbar Bugti, has led a recent uprising against security forces, district administrator Abdus Samad Lasi said.
Pakistan has moved thousands of troops into Baluchistan since a deadly rocket barrage on the country’s biggest natural-gas plant in January last year sparked the current wave of unrest.
The insurgents regularly attack gas pipelines, railroads and military and government installations, while clashes between militants and soldiers are frequent.
A man was killed and seven others were injured by other landmine blasts in the province on Thursday.
Three Chinese engineers and their driver were shot dead in Baluchistan on February 15.
On February 5, at least 12 people were killed and 13 injured when a powerful bomb exploded on a passenger bus in the province.
The ethnic Baluch tribesmen want some of the proceeds from the sparsely populated province’s stores of natural gas and oppose the creation of military garrisons in the area.
Security officials admit there has been a rise in the violence since the government ordered a fresh crackdown in December last year after rockets hit the town of Kohlu during a visit by President Pervez Musharraf. — Sapa-AFP