Motorcycle bomb kills one, wounds 13 in Chaman

CHAMAN: A motorcycle bomb exploded Thursday near a police checkpost in a southwestern Pakistani town near the Afghan border, killing one civilian and wounding 13 others, police said.

The bomb went off in the border town of Chaman in the troubled Balochistan province.

"The bomb was planted in a motorcycle. One person was killed and 13 were wounded -- all of them were civilians," Shahid Saleem, a police official in Chaman told AFP.

Saleem said the apparent target of the bombing was the police checkpost but policemen there were unhurt.

Ismail Ibrahim, a senior government official in Chaman, told AFP that the bomb was detonated via remote control.

No group has yet claimed responsiblity for the attack but Baluchistan, the least developed province of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan and Iran, has been badly hit by a decade-long Baluch separatist insurgency and sectarian violence mainly targeting Shiites muslims from the ethnic Hazara community.

Chaman is one of two major border crossings between Pakistan and Afghanistan, along with Torkham in the northwest, and is the main land route for NATO supplies crossing from Pakistan into Afghanistan. (AFP)