QUETTA: Seven people were injured in two terrorist attacks, one of them said to be a suicide bombing, on Sunday.

The first incident took place near the Police Lines on Gulistan Road and the other on Mano Jan Road.

Five people, including an office-bearer of the Civil Secretariat Staff Association, suffered injuries in the first attack.

According to police officials, the blast occurred near a bridge.

There was no official word about the nature of the blast, but eyewitness accounts claimed it was a suicide bombing.

Police collected the ‘bomber’s remains’ from the scene of the explosion, they claimed.

The injured were identified as Qaim Khan Kakar, general secretary of the Civil Secretariat Staff Association, Mohammad Usman, Fazal Mohammad, Mohammad Anwar and Thomas.

The outlawed TTP later claimed responsibility for the blast, saying that it was a suicide bombing.

In the other incident, a woman and her child were injured when unknown persons riding motorcycles hurled a grenade into the house of Nazeer Ahmed on Mano Jan Road. The grenade exploded in the courtyard.

The wife and son of Nazeer Ahmed were injured in the grenade blast. They were admitted to the Civil Hospital’s trauma centre.

The attack took place at the time when Quetta Gladiators and Peshawar Zalmi were playing an exhibition match at the Akbar Bugti Stadium a few miles away from the site.

The attacks in Balochistan’s capital were the latest in a series of terrorist attacks which spiked since the outlined TTP rescinded the ceasefire with the government in 2021.

On Jan 30, a suicide bomber targeted a mosque in Peshawar’s Police Lines, resulting in the death of over 84 people, according to figures released by the city police.

The outlawed TTP had initially claimed responsibility for the attack. It later distanced itself from it but sources earlier indicated that it might have been the handiwork of some local faction of the banned group. January was the deadliest month since 2018, in which 134 people lost their lives — a 139 per cent spike — and 254 received injuries in at least 44 militant attacks across the country.

Published in Dawn, February 6th, 2023