Quetta: At least 20 people were killed and 35 injured in an apparent suicide attack on the convoy of Balochistan Awami Party (BAP) leader Siraj Raisani who also embraced martyrdom in Balochistan’s Mastung district on Friday.
According to initial reports, Siraj’s convoy came under attack shortly after a corner meeting organised for provincial assembly seat PB-35. Siraj, brother of former Balochistan chief minister Mohmmad Aslam Khan Raisani.
Strongly condemning the attack, interim Chief Minister Balochistan Alauddin Murree directed deputy commissioner of Mastung to submit a report of the incident. “The attack is a conspiracy to sabotage the electoral process in the province,” he said in a statement.
Murree ordered the law enforcement agencies (LEAs) to ensure those behind the attack are apprehended.
Meanwhile, President Mamnoon Hussain and Prime Minister Nasirul Mulk also condemned the attack in separate statements.
This is the third terrorist attack on a candidate ahead of general polls. Earlier in the day, four people were killed and 39 injured in an attack on the convoy of former Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chief minister and Jamiat-Ulema-Islam (F) leader Akram Khan Durrani in Bannu.
The former minister was leaving a corner meeting when an improvised explosive device (IED) planted in a motorcycle some 50 metres away from the jalsa ground went off in the jurisdiction of Havaid police station, RPO Karim Khan said.
The attack comes days after Awami National Party (ANP) leader Haroon Bilour was assassinated in a suicide attack at a corner meeting that killed 19 others and injured over 60 people on June 10.
The attacker detonated his explosive belt close to the ANP leader’s vehicle as he approached a rally organised to promote his election in the Yakatoot area of the provincial capital late Tuesday night. Rescue teams and security officials shifted the deceased and injured to the Lady Reading Hospital (LRH) soon after the attack.
