An explosive rigged motorcycle was detonated to target a police van parked outside the police station in the heart of Quetta’s busy shopping area, the city police chief said

QUETTA: Five people including two policemen were killed and 27 injured in a blast near a police station in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta on Tuesday evening, a week after a similar blast that killed two people, police said. An explosive rigged motorcycle was detonated to target a police van parked outside the police station in the heart of Quetta’s busy shopping area, the city police chief said.

“Five people have been killed, including two policemen,” Abdul Razzaq Cheema, Quetta police chief told Reuters. Two women and a child are among the 27 injured in the blast, he added.

In a similar blast last Tuesday two people were killed and 16 were injured when an explosives-rigged motorcycle went off outside a store in Quetta.

Violence in the Baluchistan province, which borders Afghanistan and Iran, has fuelled concern about the security of investments, in particular, an energy link planned to run from western China to Pakistan’s southern port of Gwadar.