Suicide Attacks in Balochistan, 2008-2010

March 08

A gunman was shot dead by the Police in the Kashmirabad area near Sariab Road in Quetta. According to the Sariab Police sources, the attacker identified as Noorul Haq was firing at the Imambargah when the Police arrived. "Seeing Police, he also opened indiscriminate fire on the Police to which they retaliated, and he was gunned down," Police sources said.

March 2

Six people were killed and several others, mostly students, sustained injuries in a suicide attack on a madrassa (seminary) in Kili Karbala in the Pishin District. The Jamaat-Ulema-i-Islam (Fazlur Rehman faction JUI-F) provincial chief Maulana Muhammad Khan Shirani, the Balochistan Assembly Deputy Speaker Syed Matiullah Agha and provincial ministers belonging to the party were attending a ceremony at the seminary when a 15-year-old boy blew himself up in front of the stage. However, all the JUI-F leadership escaped unhurt. District Police Officer Akbar Raisani confirmed the incident saying that the blast had occurred at a girls’ madrassa in Kili Karbala, where Shirani was scheduled to address the school’s convocation. According to eyewitnesses, two men had come to the seminary for the bombing but one of them escaped immediately after the first explosion.

In the first-ever suicide attack in a Baloch-populated area of Balochistan, four people were killed and 11 wounded when a bomber targeted a hotel in Kalat. The attack in Kalat District appeared to be aimed at disrupting supplies to NATO forces in Afghanistan. The bomber detonated his explosives inside a hotel in the Sorab area of the District, 250 kilometers southeast of provincial capital Quetta. Most of the victims were reportedly Baloch tribesmen.

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September 24

A teenaged female student, Shahida, was killed and 22 persons were injured in a suicide blast targeting a Frontier Corps (FC) convoy in the Quetta cantonment area. A young man aged 22 to 24 years with light beard, set off his explosives near a convoy of FC vans. 13 FC personnel were injured in the attack.