Pakistan: Suicide bombing at checkpoint kills 4, wounds 19

Quetta - Three of the injured are in critical condition

Four Pakistani paramilitary guards were killed Sunday when a suicide bomber on a motorbike blew himself up in the southwestern city of Quetta, police said.

The bomber targeted Frontier Constabulary guards in the Mian Ghundi neighbourhood of the city — around 140 kilometres from the frontier with Afghanistan — where Hazara Shiite merchants were trading vegetables.

Three died immediately in the blast, with another officer dying later of his wounds, said Azhar Akram, a deputy inspector general of police.

Akram told AFP that 17 guards and two civilians were wounded in the blast. Three are in a critical condition, he said.

A spokesman for the police’s Counter-Terrorism Department confirmed the attack.

Quetta is home to approximately 500,000 Hazaras, who mostly live in an ethnic enclave on the edge of the city.