At least five people, including three children, were killed and 35 others injured when an explosion occurred near a school bus in Balochistan Province, a vast mineral-rich province in southwestern Pakistan that has been the scene of a simmering separatist insurgency for nearly a quarter-century.
The Pakistan Army's Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) said in a statement that the blast on May 20 occurred near the Rakhshan Hotel in the Zero Point area of the Khuzdar district.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attack so far, but there have been a number of armed attacks and bombings recently in Balochistan that have been claimed by Baluch separatist militant groups.
The rise in violent attacks in the strategic region bordering Afghanistan and Iran and home to the marginalized Baluch minority has highlighted the region's fragility.
On March 16, the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), a separatist militant group pursuing Balochistan's secession from Pakistan, claimed an attack on security forces in the remote district of Noshki.
Pakistani officials said the attack, a suicide truck bomb, killed three soldiers and two civilians. But the BLA claimed the attack killed 90 soldiers.
A week before that, the group declared a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union, and others hijacked a passenger train in Balochistan's historic Bolan Pass.
The unprecedented attack, even by the standards of Pakistan's violent recent past, went on for more than 36 hours.
The rising violence marked a significant escalation at a critical time for Pakistan as the Muslim nation of 250 million people reels from unrest spurred by an escalating insurgency that also involves the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Islamic State-Khorasan in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province.
Analysts say the BLA has turned from a nationalist insurgent group into a highly sophisticated, disciplined militant group.
Adding to the problem, the government has failed to eliminate political and economic instability in the impoverished region where literacy and development levels are low.
Pakistan has blamed Afghanistan's Taliban government and its regional archrival India for the rising violence.
Officials have frequently blamed the easy availability of sophisticated US arms left behind in Afghanistan. Groups such as the BLA and TTP now use sophisticated night-vision goggles, sniper rifles, and other military gear possibly acquired from Afghanistan.
Kabul and New Delhi have rejected Islamabad's claims they are responsible for the attacks.
