A day before elections, explosions in Balochistan claimed 30 lives

ISLAMABAD In Pakistan’s uneasy southwest Balochistan region, there were two explosions on Wednesday that left at least thirty people dead and over forty wounded. The day before the nation’s crucial general elections, which are expected to be violent and tainted by allegations of pre-election manipulation, occurred.

On the eve of elections to national and provincial legislatures, despite the deployment of 500,000 security forces to prevent bloodshed, bomb attacks nevertheless occurred.
The first explosion happened in Khanozai tehsil of Pishin district, which borders Afghanistan, in front of Asfandyar Khan’s election office as an independent candidate. A local government-run hospital’s medical superintendent, Dr. Habib Kakar, said that 23 wounded people and 14 dead had been brought to the institution. Afterwards, he announced that four of the injured had died, bringing the total number of deaths to 18. According to Kakar, the seven were in severe condition and were evacuated to Quetta, the provincial capital, where they received better medical attention.
Videos that surfaced on internet forums showed villagers and rescuers loading the wounded and dead onto ambulances.
The district’s leading civilian officer, Jumma Dad Mandokhail, said that an improvised explosive device attached to a motorbike was the source of the explosion. When the explosion went off, a sizable group of Independent candidate supporters had gathered outside his office.
Not long after, another bomb went off next to Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam Fazl (JUI-F)’s election headquarters in Qilla Saifullah, Balochistan, killing 12 and wounding 15. The right-wing party JUI-F has been the target of terrorist attacks in the past.
The strikes, according to Balochistan’s Minister of Information Jan Achakzai, were the militants’ most recent effort to tamper with elections. Achakzai said, “But I want to be clear that the elections will go place as planned.
In Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in the northwest, there were regular insurgent assaults in the run-up to the elections against security personnel and political activists. The majority of assaults on security personnel in the unstable province have been carried out by the banned Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA). In the Mach area of Balochistan, the BLA attacked military and security institutions last week, resulting in at least 15 fatalities. The region, which borders Afghanistan and Iran, is also home to a sizable population of terrorist organizations, including the Pakistani Taliban.