Blast kills more than 28 in Pakistan on election day, hospital says

A blast targeting a police van killed more than 28 people in Pakistan’s northwestern city of Quetta, and wounded at least 40 on Wednesday, a hospital spokesman said, as the South Asian nation goes to the vote to choose a new government.

The blast happened near a polling station, said a Reuters witness in Quetta, capital of Pakistan’s province of Baluchistan, but it was unclear if voting had been disrupted.

“Over 20 bodies and 28 injured have been shifted to civil hospitals,” Dr Waseem Baig, a spokesman for a Quetta hospital, told Reuters.

Television images showed a charred police vehicle, cordoned off by security officials.

ISIS has claimed responsibility for an explosion near a polling station in Quetta, Pakistan, on Wednesday, according to the group’s AMAQ news agency.

The group said the attack was carried out by a suicide bomber, but did not provide further detail or evidence for its claim.

An earlier attack in the province on Wednesday left one policeman dead and three wounded when a hand grenade was thrown at a polling station in the village of Koshk, in Khuzdar district.

The military has stationed over 370,000 personnel across Pakistan to ensure security for the election, bolstered by an additional 450,000 police.

Source: Al Arabiya