Pakistani vegetable market bombing kills at least 60 people, wounds at least 180

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Pakistani police say a bombing at a vegetable market has killed 15 people and wounded 50 others in the country's southwest.
Photographer: GEO TV

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Posted: 02/16/2013

By: Abdul Sattar

QUETTA, Pakistan (AP) -- 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 chief Zubair Mahmood gave the updated figure a few hours after a bomb ripped through a crowded vegetable market Saturday evening.

Dozens of people were also injured in the attack which occurred in a mostly Shiite Muslim area.

Senior police officer Wazir Khan Nasir said the bomb was detonated by remote control in a Shiite Muslim-dominated residential area of Quetta.

Women and children were among the victims, he said, adding that the death toll could rise.

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.