At least seven people, including five schoolchildren and a policeman, were killed and 17 others were injured on Friday in a remote-controlled blast targeting a police van in Pakistan’s Balochistan province.

The blast occurred at 8.35 am near a girl’s high school at the Civil Hospital Chowk of the Mastung district of the province, multiple reports said.

“It was an IED (improvised explosive device) used in the blast, and the target apparently was a police mobile parked near the school,” Kalat Division Commissioner Naeem Bazai said.

Naeem Bazai said the IED was apparently attached to a motorcycle and detonated when the police mobile came close to it. A police van and several auto-rickshaws were damaged in the explosion.

According to a report in PTI, the blast was so powerful that schoolchildren who were going to the school at that time were hit by the explosion.

Mastung District Police Officer (DPO) Miandad Umrani confirmed that five schoolchildren, one police official and a civilian were killed in the blast.

The explosion injured 17 others, among whom were schoolchildren between the ages of eight and 13, as well as policemen.

Umrani added that 11 of those injured had been moved to the Quetta Trauma Centre for treatment. Meanwhile, Balochistan Chief Minister Sarfaraz Bugti took to X to condemn the blast, calling it “inhumane”.

He said terrorists had now “targeted innocent children along with poor labourers” in an apparent reference to a recent attack by unidentified gunmen at a dam construction site in the province’s Panjgur district, which killed five workers and injured two others.

He added that terrorists had targeted children, deeming them to be a “soft target”, according to the Dawn newspaper. In the aftermath of the blast, an emergency was declared across all Quetta hospitals, Geo News reported, quoting the provincial health department spokesperson, adding that all doctors, pharmacists, staff nurses and other medical staff were summoned.