QUETTA, April 15: A powerful explosion rocked the city on Saturday night.

Police officials said that the explosive device had been planted inside a roadside drain near the house of a dental surgeon at Wafa Road.

The house of Senator Saeed Ahmed Hashmi is also located in the same area.

The powerful blast damaged a car parked nearby besides smashing windowpanes of nearby houses. No casualty was reported.

The police said it was a home-made explosive device.

Meanwhile, heavy fighting was reported between security forces and armed tribesmen in the Chashma area in Dera Bugti. No loss of life was reported in the clash.

Three rockets were also reported to have been fired on an FC checkpost in the Mand area in Turbat district near Iranian border.

No damage or casualty was reported.

Tribesmen, however, claimed inflicting losses in the Qambar Lango area of the Loti gas field. They claimed that an FC soldier was killed in the attack while four other FC men were injured in a landmine explosion in the Mat Jamshahi area of Dera Bugti.

The claims were rejected by officials, who said that no such incident had occurred in that area.

In another development, the Quetta Electric Supply Company said that power supply disrupted after the destruction of power pylons would be restored in the next few day.

The company’s officials said that the repair work on both transmission lines and pylons was nearly finished.

“The power crisis would be resolved within one week,” Qesco’s Chief Engineer Nasir Ali Bangush said.

Meanwhile, a spokesman of a recently-banned organisation, Merak Baloch said that militants had decided not to attack power supply lines in the province for the next 45 days.

“No power supply line will be attacked in the next 45 days,” he said on satellite phone.

He said that the decision was taken in the larger interest of the people, especially farmers who, he said, suffered because of the destruction of power transmission lines.

He, however, said that there was no guarantee that they would not be attacked after 45 days.

He also claimed that the banned organisation was behind the destruction of a railway bridge on the Sibi-Harnai section.