Islamabad: A powerful bomb went off in a market at Dera Allah Yar town in the restive Balochistan province of Pakistan on Friday, killing six people and injuring 40 others, officials said.
The blast ripped through several shops at Quetta Road, a market in Dera Allah Yar, the headquarters of Jaffarabad district, security officials said.
Three children were among the dead, they said. Forty injured persons were taken to a nearby hospital. Officials described the condition of 15 of them as serious. Footage on television showed local residents putting the injured in private vehicles and rushing them to hospital.
Three shops and a motorcycle were destroyed by the blast. It could not immediately be ascertained if the explosives were planted in a shop. No group claimed responsibility for the attack.
Balochistan has been rocked by sectarian, ethnic and militant violence since last year. Several Baloch nationalist groups are involved in an insurgency in the resource-rich province. Earlier this year, nearly 200 Shia Hazaras were killed in two bomb attacks in Quetta, the provincial capital. (PTI)
