Home »General News » Pakistan » Bomb-maker injured in Balochistan madressah

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  • Mar 22nd, 2005
  • Comments Off on Bomb-maker injured in Balochistan madressah
A bomb exploded at a madressah on Monday in Balochistan, injuring a man who was putting the device together, police said. Police arrested four people, including the bomb maker, after the blast at Shamsul Uloom school in Osta Muhammad, some 250km south-east of Quetta, Balochistan police chief Chaudhry Muhammad Yaqub told AFP. They also found bomb-making literature, he said. In the explosion, militant Abdul Haleem was hurt when his bomb exploded, setting prayer mats on fire, police officer Shahbaz Khan said.

Khan described Haleem as a Sunni militant who had arrived in the town on Sunday and apparently planned to plant the bomb later on Monday, but it was unclear where.

"A neighbouring house was raided later and three men were arrested from there and explosive materials, fuses, wires and detonators were also recovered," he said.

Usa Mohammad is about 70km south-east of the town of Gandhawa, where a bomb exploded late on Saturday at a shrine, killing 39 people and wounding 40.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but Balochistan has a history of violence between Sunnis and Shias.

It has also been troubled recently by attacks by ethnic minority nationalists fighting for autonomy.

Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao on Sunday ruled out the possibility that Sunni-Shia rivalry or tribal militants were behind the Saturday blast at the shrine.

He said police were investigating whether rivalry between caretakers of the shrine might have been to blame or the Muslims opposed to the celebrations at the shrine including dancing and singing by women devotees.

Security has been tight in Balochistan since an attack by tribal militants on the country's largest gas field on Jan. 11, in which at least 15 people were killed.

On Thursday, eight soldiers were killed and 23 wounded in a battle with the militants on the outskirts of Dera Bugti town, 170km east of Gandhawa.

A tribal politician said the military killed at least 60 people and wounded more than 150 and among the dead were dozens of minority Hindus. The military has called these figures exaggerated.

But an intelligence official said 19 Hindu members of the tribe, living near a rebel stronghold in Dera Bugti, were among those killed in the Thursday clash.

Copyright Reuters, 2005


Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2005


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