Pakistan blast kills 5 students, wounds 11 others

An explosion killed five students at an Islamic school run by a pro-Taliban religious party near the Pakistani city of Quetta on Friday, police said.

Quetta is the capital of Baluchistan, a southwestern province bordering Afghanistan, where a large number of schools were set up in the 1980s to raise volunteers to fight against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in a war covertly funded by the United States. Quetta is known to be a hub for Taliban militants fighting in neighboring Afghanistan.

The Taliban movement sprang from these schools in the 1990s. "The witnesses say that someone threw explosives into the school, but we are investigating," a police official told reporters.

However, another police official said the blast took place inside a room of the school and its walls had fallen outwardly, suggesting there could be some explosives inside the room. "We are looking into all possibilities including the one that whether they were preparing some explosives."

Eleven students were wounded in the blast, police said.

Nobody has so far claimed responsibility for the explosion.

Tribal rebels in gas-rich Baluchistan, which borders Afghanistan and Iran, are waging an insurgency, demanding political autonomy and a greater share of profits from the region's natural resources.

Hundreds of people have died in violence in the province since the insurgency flared in late 2004.

The province has also been hit by attacks blamed on Taliban militants.