3 killed in Quetta grenade attack on store selling national flags ahead of Pakistan I-Day

Three people were killed and six were wounded in the restive southwestern Baluchistan province on Tuesday, after suspected militants hurled hand grenades at a house and store selling Pakistani national flags ahead of Pakistan's 77th independence day.

The responsibility of the attack that took place on Tuesday was taken by the separatist group Baluch Liberation Army in the provincial capital of Quetta. Days before, the group asked shop owners not to sell flags. It also issued warning to people not to celebrate the holiday on Wednesday, marking the Aug 14, 1947 date of Pakistan's independence from British colonial rule.

Following the attacks, the bodies and six injured people were received at a government hospital, said Wasim Baig.

Pakistan's army chief Gen Asim Munir pledged to defeat militancy in a televised speech at an event that took place at a military academy in the country's northeast on the eve of Independence Day.

Munir sought cooperation from neighbouring Afghanistan against the Pakistani Taliban, a militant group that operates from Afghan soil and that has stepped up attacks across the border in the northwest.


The group also works in southwestern Baluchistan alongside the long-running insurgency in that region, which also shares a border with Afghanistan.

Recently, a group of militants killed four security forces in South Waziristan, a district in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, the military said. Troops retaliated by killing six insurgents, said a statement.