Pakistan, May 25: A bomb blast wounded 15 people, most of them police officers or paramilitary troops, in the South-Western Pakistani city of Quetta on Monday. The wounded were six policemen and eight paramilitary frontier constabulary troops riding in a truck and one passer-by, according to Jan Mohammad, a policeman who was travelling in the back of the truck. Doctors said most of the injuries were minor and no one was seriously hurt. Mohammad, who was slightly wounded, believed the blast was caused by a bomb thrown by a man riding on the back of a motorcycle. But city police official, Senior Superintendent Rehmatullah Niazi, said the signs were that it was caused by a bomb with a timer and not by something thrown from a motorcycle.
Niazi said the bomb could have been attached to a bicycle and added that 32 men had been in the truck.
Police said they did not know who was behind the bombing, but Quetta has been the scene of repeated attacks in recent years by Islamic militants angered by the Pakistani government's support for the US-led "war on terror".
It has also seen sectarian attacks and bombings blamed on tribesmen pushing for greater provincial autonomy. In March, 44 people were killed and 150 wounded in an attack on a minority Shi'ite mosque in Quetta that was blamed on Sunni militants. There have been several smaller blasts in the city since. Bureau Report