QUETTA: A man was killed and nine other people, including two police officers, were injured in two back-to-back explosions near Khazai Chowk in the western bypass area here on Thursday night.

The injured included a reporter and a cameraman of a television news channel, who had reached the area to cover the first bomb explosion when the second one ripped through the area.

Police said the first blast took place near the office of a transport company, injuring four people. Security personnel, among them members of a bomb disposal squad, were busy in their work when another explosion occurred, resulting in injuries to seven people, including station house officers of two police stations.

“A volunteer of the Chhipa rescue service was killed in the explosion,” said the deputy inspector general for Quetta, Abdul Razzaq Cheema.

He said that two sub-inspectors from the Airport and Kharotabad police stations and three other security personnel, including two officials of a bomb disposal squad, were injured in the incident.

Soon after the second explosion more police and Frontier Corps personnel rushed to the site and helped shift the injured to the Civil and Bolan Medical College (BMC) hospitals.

“We received one body and nine injured in the two hospitals,” said Dr Wasim Baig, a spokesman for the Civil Hospital, Quetta.

He said that after initial treatment, TV reporter Ibrar Ahmed and cameraman Syed Rehmat Ali were shifted to the Civil hospital from BMC.

Police said the explosions were caused by an improvised explosive device planted near the office of the transport company and an explosives-laden motorcycle parked nearby.

“The explosive device attached to the motorbike was detonated by remote control,” Mr Cheema said.

The office of the transport company and the nearby buildings were badly damaged in the twin blasts.

A police officer said policemen see­med to be the target of the second blast. The explosions could be a reaction to an operation carried out by security personnel in the eastern bypass area a day earlier in which six suspected militants had been killed, he added.

The rescue worker of the Chhipa service who was killed in the incident was identified as Mohammad Naeem. The injured were identified as Ibrar Ahmed, Reh­mat Ali, Noor-ul-Hassan, Niaz Ahmed, Asmatullah, Fazlur Rehman, Khushdil Khan, Irshad Nawaz and Ali.

Published in Dawn, September 6th, 2019