Bomb at Packed Market Kills 60 in Pakistan

A Pakistani official says the death toll in the evening bombing at a vegetable market in the city of Quetta has jumped to 60. Quetta police gave the updated figure a few hours after a bomb ripped through the crowded market—as dozens of women and children were shopping for the evening meal. It may have been planted in a rickshaw and detonated by remote control. Senior police officer Wazir Khan Nasir said the bomb went off in a Shiite-dominated residential suburb of the city.

Members of the minority Shiite sect took to the city streets in angry protest, blocking roads with burning tires and throwing stones at passing vehicles. In response, police cordoned off the area. Quetta is the capital of Baluchistan province, where the Shiite minority has been attacked several times in recent months. Baluch nationalist groups are fighting an insurgency there to try to gain a greater share of income from the province's gas and mineral resources. Islamic militants and the banned sectarian group Lashker-e-Jhangvi are also active in the province. (More Pakistan stories.)