{"id":38963,"date":"2019-04-12T10:23:44","date_gmt":"2019-04-12T10:23:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=38963"},"modified":"2019-04-12T10:23:44","modified_gmt":"2019-04-12T10:23:44","slug":"pakistan-deadly-explosion-rips-through-quetta-market","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=38963","title":{"rendered":"Pakistan: Deadly explosion rips through Quetta market"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Islamabad, Pakistan<\/strong> – At least 20 people have been killed and another 40 wounded as an explosion ripped through a market in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta, a provincial official says, the latest attack to target the city’s minority Hazara community.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Announcing the death toll, provincial minister Zia Langove said: “Four or five [of the wounded] are in critical condition.”<\/p>\n

The explosion took place as Hazaras, who are Shia Muslims, were buying vegetables early on Friday morning.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Members of the Hazara community go to the market every day to shop, and we provide them with a security escort,”\u00a0Quetta police chief Abdul Razzaq Cheema told Al Jazeera by telephone.<\/span><\/p>\n

“They were at the market as police and [paramilitary] Frontier Corps soldiers patrolled the area. There was a store selling potatoes, and that is where the explosion has taken place.”<\/p>\n

Images from the scene of the explosion showed blood sprayed across the dirt floor of the market, damaged vehicles and sacks of potatoes\u00a0split open by the force of the blast.<\/span><\/p>\n

Cheema said police would not know whether the bomb was planted or a suicide attack until investigating teams, who had cordoned off the site, completed their analysis.<\/p>\n

“The bomb appeared to have been set in the potato sacks, but we cannot rule out whether it was a suicide attack just yet,” he said.<\/p>\n

At least seven members of the Hazara community and one paramilitary soldier were among those killed, he said.<\/p>\n

At a press conference later he said there had been no warning the market might be attacked.<\/p>\n

“There are a lot of general security threats issued, but for this place there was no specific threat.”<\/p>\n

Targeted campaign<\/h2>\n

Since 2013, more than 509 Shia Muslims – mainly ethnic Hazaras – have been killed in a campaign of targeted shootings and bombings in Balochistan province, according to government data.<\/p>\n

The majority of attacks have occurred in the provincial capital, Quetta, where most of the country’s roughly 600,000 Hazaras reside.<\/p>\n

The city’s Hazara residents now live in two heavily protected enclaves on either side of the city, with movement outside of those areas restricted by threats to their lives.<\/p>\n

Members of the community say they refrain from engaging in business or education in other parts of the city because of the risks.<\/p>\n

Every morning, police guard a convoy that leaves the Hazara enclave to visit markets so that Hazaras may stock up on basic necessities.<\/p>\n

This is not the first time vegetable traders have been targeted by attackers.<\/p>\n

In October 2017, unidentified gunmen opened fire<\/a> on a van bound for the fruit and vegetable market, killing the driver and four others, police say.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The attacks have been linked<\/a> to the far-right Ahle Sunnat Wal Jammat (ASWJ) Sunni Muslim political party, and its associated Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) armed group.\u00a0<\/p>\n

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack on Friday.<\/p>\n

Asad Hashim is Al Jazeera’s digital correspondent in Pakistan. He tweets\u00a0@AsadHashim.<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Islamabad, Pakistan – At least 20 people have been killed and another 40 wounded as an explosion ripped through a market in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta, a provincial official says, the latest attack to target the city’s minority Hazara community.\u00a0 Announcing the death toll, provincial minister Zia Langove said: “Four or five [of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":38964,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38963\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}