An explosion killed five students at an Islamic school near the Pakistani city of Quetta today, police said.
Quetta is the capital of Baluchistan, a southwestern province bordering Afghanistan, where a large number of schools, or madrasas 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 and Saudi Arabia.
The Taliban movement sprang from these madrasas in the 1990s. "The madrasa people say that someone threw explosives into the madrasa, but we are investigating," police official Wazir Khan Nasir told Reuters.
However, another police official said the blast took place inside a room of the madrasa 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."
Elevan students were wounded in the blast, police said.
Ethnic Baluch militants are also fighting with Pakistani security forces for more autonomy for their region.