Blast near shop kills two in FR Lakki
Security forces have launched a search operation in the area.
LAKKI MARWAT (Web Desk / Reuters) – A landmine explosion near a shop claimed two lives in Lakki Marwat, a town about 110 miles south of Peshawar on Monday morning, Dunya News reported.
According to police, the landmine exploded as two men Din Muhammad and Shamsur Rehman opened the shop in Zandi Akbar Khan area. Both died on the spot.
Police have gathered evidence from the scene. Security forces later launched a search operation in the area.
The incident occurs two days after at least nine people were killed and 35 wounded when a suicide bomber blew himself up near a military convoy in Pakistan’s western city of Quetta.
Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) spokesman Muhammad Khurasani told Reuters that the group was responsible for the attack in the capital of the province of Balochistan.
The bombing was the latest in a region which is home to the planned route of a $46 billion China-Pakistan economic corridor.
"The suicide bomber was riding a bicycle close to a Frontier Corps vehicle," said senior police official Imtiaz Shah, referring to the branch of paramilitary forces targeted in the attack.
At least three Frontier Corps personnel were killed and 15 were injured in the attack that occurred in the city center in the late afternoon, Frontier Corps spokesman Khan Wasey said.
A 12-year-old girl was also among the dead, said Ajab Khan, a doctor at the city’s Civil Hospital, where the casualties were taken.
Rich in resources, Balochistan is at the heart of the multi-billion-dollar energy and infrastructure projects which China and Pakistan are planning along a corridor stretching from the Arabian Sea to China’s Xinjiang region.
The province, the poorest and least developed in Pakistan, has seen nearly a decade of separatist violence against the government and non-Baloch ethnic groups.
In January, five Pakistani soldiers and two coast guard members were killed in separate attacks in the province, and a suicide bomber killed at least 15 people outside a polio eradication center in Quetta.
