Bakery bombing in southwest Pakistan kills 1, wounds 6

QUETTA, Pakistan (AP) — A bomb exploded in a bakery in Pakistan’s restive southwestern Baluchistan province killing at least one person and wounding six others, including a woman and a child, police said Saturday.

Police officer Qaseem Shah said the bomb tore through a shop in the main bazaar of the district of Awaran. He said “anti-state elements,” a reference to Baluch separatists, left the explosive device under a counter and it was triggered remotely.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack but Baluch separatist groups have claimed attacks in public spaces and on security forces in the past.

Baluchistan has long been the location of a low-level insurgency by the Baluchistan Liberation Army and other small separatist groups demanding independence from the central government in Islamabad. Although Pakistan claims it has quelled the insurgency, violence in the province has persisted.

Attempts to reach a spokesperson for the BLA for comment were not immediately successful.