TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - At least six people were killed in an explosion targeting a school bus in the Khuzdar district, Balochistan province, southwestern Pakistan, an official said, including three children and two adults.
Authorities said the death toll may rise due to the severity of the explosion.
Yasir Iqbal Dashti, a government official in Khuzdar, said at least 38 people were injured in the attack on Wednesday, May 21, 2025.
"The school bus belonged to Army Public School as it was picking children in the morning when it was attacked," he told Al Jazeera.
The Pakistani military, in a statement, condemned the violence and accused "Indian terror proxies" of being involved in the attack. They did not provide evidence to support the claim.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif "strongly condemned" the attack by "terrorists working under Indian patronage."
Sharif also expressed "sympathies" to the families of those killed by the "brutality."
There was no immediate comment from New Delhi.
As reported by Arab News, no one has claimed responsibility for the attack, but suspicion is likely to fall on separatist groups like the Balochistan Liberation Army, which in March blew up a railway track and held train passengers hostage, killing 31 people.
Southwestern Balochistan is the largest province in Pakistan by area but the smallest by population and the most impoverished. The region of about 15 million people is home to major mining projects and a deep-sea port built by China but has been rocked by a decades-long insurgency.
“Targeting innocent children is a barbaric act, those responsible deserve no leniency,” Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi said in a statement, describing the attack as a “vile conspiracy to destabilize the country.”
Wednesday's attack recalled one of the deadliest militant attacks in Pakistan's history, when more than 130 children were killed at a military school in the northern city of Peshawar in 2014. The attack was claimed by the Pakistani Taliban.
Tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbors Pakistan and India have escalated since they observed a ceasefire on May 10 following the most intense military confrontation in decades.
Both countries accuse each other of supporting militants in their respective territories - allegations denied by both.
The latest military escalation, in which both countries fired missiles, drones, and artillery at each other, was triggered after India accused Pakistan of supporting militants who attacked dozens of tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir on April 22, killing 26 people. Islamabad denied involvement.
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