Bomb blast kills 3, wounds 9 in Pakistan’s southwest

Pakistani police say a bomb has killed three people and wounded nine others in the southwestern town of Chaman near the Afghan border. (File/AFP)

• Officer Mohammad Iqbal says the bomb Saturday was planted in a motorcycle parked outside the office of a religious party
• Chaman is in the province of Baluchistan, where there is a yearslong low-level insurgency by Baluch separatists

QUETTA: Pakistani police say a bomb has killed three people and wounded nine others in the southwestern town of Chaman near the Afghan border.
Officer Mohammad Iqbal says the bomb Saturday was planted in a motorcycle parked outside the office of a religious party.
He said the bomb detonated remotely when Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam party’s leader Maulana Mohammad Hanif was exiting the building, killing Hanif and two other men.
The blast took place amid heightened security in the town due to a presidential vote being held across the border in Afghanistan.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the blast.
Chaman is in the province of Baluchistan, where there is a yearslong low-level insurgency by Baluch separatists. Extremist militants also operate there.