Pakistan's Taliban claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing attack that killed four Pakistani paramilitaries on Sunday (September 5th) in Quetta, in the southwest of the country, in a statement cited by Site, a private American organization monitoring jihadist sites.
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A suicide bomber on a motorcycle "
targeted members of the CF (Frontier Corps, editor's note) with a vest and a motorcycle loaded with explosives,
" in the Mian Ghundi district of Quetta, the Pakistani Taliban said (Tehreek-e- Taliban Pakistan, TTP) in this release.
The explosion occurred in this town, located near the Afghan border, when merchants from the Shia Hazara community were selling vegetables.
Three paramilitaries were killed instantly and a fourth succumbed later to his injuries, senior police official Azhar Akram told AFP, confirming the attack.
Seventeen others were injured as well as two civilians, he added.
Three of them are currently in critical condition.
A spokesman for the Pakistani police counterterrorism section confirmed the attack.
The Hazara Shiites, a minority in a predominantly Sunni country, are regularly victims of attacks by Sunni Islamists, who consider them heretics. The paramilitaries in charge of monitoring and controlling the Afghan-Pakistani border have suffered attacks for several years in this region of Baluchistan where separatist militants are rife demanding more autonomy.