QUETTA, March 24: Hundreds of mills and factories came to a grinding halt in three industrial estates of Lasbela district when power supply from Karachi was suspended after a pylon near Hub was blown up on Monday night.

A senior police official told Dawn that saboteurs had planted an explosive device under the pylon of the 132 KV transmission line of the Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC) in an area separating Karachi with Hub.

He said around 300 industrial units in Hub, Winder and Uthal stopped production due to suspension of power supply.

He said that only those units which had their own power generators were working.

He said that engineers of the KESC would start replacing the destroyed pylon on Tuesday after security clearance.

“Restoration of power supply will take at least four to five days,” he said.

A spokesman for the banned Baloch Liberation Army claimed that the BLA was behind the explosion.

Calling from an unspecified place through a satellite phone, Beerbargh Baloch told newsmen that militants had also attacked security personnel in the Karmo Wadh area of Kahan tehsil in Kohlu district.

He claimed that two security personnel had been killed and four others injured. However, official sources did not confirm the incident.