Pakistan blast kills 11 people near mine, officials say

QUETTA (Reuters) -A bomb targeting a vehicle carrying coal miners in southwestern Pakistan killed at least 11 people and wounded six others, local officials said on Friday.

The truck had brought the workers to a mine in the Harnai area of Balochistan province, where Pakistan is battling a separatist insurgency.

"An improvised explosive device was planted at the road side which exploded when truck carting coal miners reached the site," a paramilitary official said.

The official, who declined to be identified, added that it may have been a remote operated device.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

The region's deputy commissioner, Hazrat Wali Agha, said 17 miners were in the truck when the bomb went off.

A doctor at the local hospital said two of the wounded are in critical condition.

Mineral-rich Balochistan, which borders Iran and Afghanistan, has been the scene of a decade-old insurgency by separatist ethnic Baloch groups. Islamist militants also operate in the area.

(Reporting by Saleem Ahmed in Quetta; Writing by Tanvi Mehta and Saad Sayeed; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

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