Pakistan: 13 killed in courtroom bombing

A powerful bomb exploded inside a courtroom in south-western Pakistan today, killing a judge and 12 others, police said.

It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack at the District Courts complex in Quetta, the capital of south-western Baluchistan province. Afaq Zahid, an area police chief, said they had transported the dead and injured to a hospital.

“I confirm that the civil judge Abdul Wahid has died in the bomb explosion,” he said.

City police chief Rauf Khan said the blast killed 13 people, including Wahid, five lawyers and relatives of some of the prisoners on trial.

“At this stage it is difficult to say whether it was a suicide attack or someone had planted the bomb there,” he said.

Police collected body parts from the site of the attack, and bomb disposal experts were still investigating to determine the exact nature of the attack, he said.

Abdul Rashid, a lawyer on the site of the blast, said he saw a severed head inside the courtroom, and he speculated it might have been a suicide attack.

Pakistan is a key ally of the US in its war on terror and has witnessed scores of terrorist attacks since it threw its support behind Washington following the September 11, 2001, attacks in America.

The latest attack came a day after police announced that they had arrested five suspected militants from the southern city of Karachi and Rawalpindi, a garrison city near Islamabad, and that the suspects were planning suicide attacks on foreigners and minority Shiite Muslims.