ISLAMABAD

By Aamir Latif

At least four people were killed and eight injured in a hand-grenade attack on a barber shop followed by indiscriminate shooting in the southwestern Quetta city on Wednesday, police said.

Eyewitnesses said that four to five masked men hurled hand grenades on a barber shop in the Sirki Kalan area of Quetta, the capital of militancy-hit Baluchistan province. The grenades went off with a loud explosion forcing nearby markets and business centers to shut. 

Mohammad Aslam, a city police chief, said the assailants fired indiscriminately after hurling the hand grenades injuring several people. Two people died on site, while two others died in hospital.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack; however, secular Baluch separatists recently have been involved in grenade-throwing incidents targeting non-Baluch settlers. Government forces have been facing a fierce rebellion in Baluchistan for decades in the area the size of Italy, which is rich in copper, gold and natural gas.

Baluch separatists who have been fighting for the "liberation" of Baluchistan claim that the mineral-rich province had forcibly been incorporated into Pakistan at the time of partition of united India in August 1947. The province has witnessed various spates of insurgency from Baluch separatists with short and long intervals in last 66 years. 

The ongoing wave of insurgency was triggered following the killing of Nawab Akbar Bugti, a veteran Baluch politician and a former governor and chief minister of the province in 2006 in a military operation launched on the orders of former military dictator General Pervez Musharraf. Musharraf is currently facing trial for Bugti’s murder.

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