Bomb kills three Pakistani troops in Baluchistan

A bomb blast on Friday killed at least three paramilitary soldiers and wounded four others in Pakistan’s restive southwestern province of Baluchistan, officials said.

The roadside bomb hit a patrol vehicle in the Jahoo area of remote Awaran district, a stronghold of separatist rebels that was hit by a major earthquake in September last year.

Baluchistan, which borders Iran and Afghanistan, is rife with separatist and Islamist militants and plagued by sectarian bloodshed.

“At least three soldiers were martyred and four others were wounded, two of them seriously when a bomb planted by miscreants exploded on a roadside,” spokesman of Frontier Corps Abdul Wasay told AFP.

Pakistani officials refer to Baluch insurgents, who have been waging a bloody low-level separatist struggle for a decade, as “miscreants.”

Nobody immediately claimed the responsibility for the attack.

Local intelligence officials confirmed the bombing and casualties.