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Pakistan was rocked by six bomb and landmine blasts targeting key transport, communications and power facilities on Thursday, causing widespread damage and blowing off a soldier's foot. Five of the explosions were in Balochistan. Two railway lines were ripped up in the attacks, including the main line between Quetta and Zahidan. The track was blown up at Mastung, a small town some 56 kilometres (34 miles) south-east of Quetta, a railway control room official told AFP on condition of anonymity. Officials were inspecting the damage, he added.

Hours earlier a powerful bomb ripped through the wall of a police station in the same town without causing any injuries, local police chief Salim Lehri said.

In another rail blast a passenger train escaped a possible accident when a pilot engine found part of the track missing at Dera Ghazi Khan, 90 kilometres west of Multan, in Punjab province.

A four-feet stretch had been blown up by a bomb leaving a two-feet deep crater and halting the Chiltan Express travelling from Quetta to Rawalpindi, railway police said.

Authorities started running the pilot engines to check rail routes last month after a series of train bombings in Balochistan. All night services in the province were also halted in January.

In Kohlu, Balochistan some 340 kilometres south-east of Quetta, militants blew up two microwave telephone masts, officials said.

As security personnel escorted telephone officials to repair the damage they were hit by a landmine blast, leaving a low-ranking soldier seriously injured an official of the paramilitary Frontier Corps official in Quetta confirmed. Security sources said the injured man lost his foot in the blast.

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2005


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