CHAMAN: Police successfully foiled a terrorism bid early Saturday afternoon by defusing a bomb in Chaman, officials said.

Saeed Ahmed, a police official told Dawn.com that unknown militants had planted a bomb weighing three kilograms outside a private foreign bank on Mal Road in Chaman.

He said a bank employee spotted the bomb outside and immediately called the police to defuse it. "All surrounding areas were evacuated to defuse the bomb in one of the most crowded areas of the city," Ahmed said. He added that there was the possibility of a large number of causalities in case a blast had occurred.

In the recent past, militants have carried out low-intensity bombings in Chaman, targeting police stations and other national installations. Chaman is considered a sensitive town in Balochistan as it shares a border with Afghanistan's volatile Kandahar province.

The same bank was attacked in April earlier this year in a bomb blast which injured seven people.