Grenade attacks injure 44 in southwest Pakistan

Quetta: Two separate hand grenade attacks in Pakistan’s restive southwest on Thursday injured 44 people, some of them seriously, police and hospital officials said.

The incidents took place in Mastung and Gwadar districts of oil and gas-rich Baluchistan province, which borders Iran and Afghanistan.

Nobody has so far claimed responsibility for the attacks, but Baluchistan is afflicted by Islamist militancy, sectarian violence and a separatist insurgency.

“Two men riding a motorbike threw a hand grenade at a busy boulevard, injuring 21 people, three of them seriously in Mastung,” a senior local police official told AFP.

Another police official, Abdul Qudus, confirmed the incident.

Elsewhere in Gwadar district two motorcyclists hurled a hand grenade near a roadside hotel injuring 23 people, many of them labourers who were having after-dinner tea, local police official Imam Bukhsh told AFP.

He said one person sustained serious injuries and his condition was later reported critical.

Pakistan has been battling Islamist, ethnic and political insurgencies for decades but violence has been reduced in recent years following military operations across the country.

–AFP