QUETTA, May 14: Two Frontier Corps personnel and two civilians were killed when a car bomb exploded as a convoy passed by in the Almo Chowk area of the city on Monday.

About 58 others, among them 11 FC personnel, two children and a woman, were injured.

Saddar SP Chaudhry Mohammad Arshad said militants placed more than 40 kilograms of explosives in a car and parked it on the Almo chowk. The FC convoy, coming to Quetta from the Ghazaband area, was targeted, he added.

The officer said more than two dozen shops, seven vehicles, two banks and a private hospital were damaged in the blast.

Rescue workers took the bodies and the injured to the civil hospital and the Combined Military Hospital Quetta.

“We declared a state of emergency in all government hospitals and I have directed doctors to provide free treatment to the injured,” Health Minister Ainullah Shams told Dawn.

Police and FC personnel cordoned off the area where the blast occurred and started search for suspects.

The Baloch Republican Army claimed responsibility for the attack.

Sarbaz Baloch, who introduced himself as a spokesman for the BRA, called reporters and said such attacks would continue in future.

Balochistan Chief Minister Nawab Aslam Raisani and Governor Nawab Zulfiqar Magsi condemned the attack and termed it a cowardly act on the part of militants.

They said these attacks would not stop the government from taking action against the perpetuators of such crimes.