At least nine people, including five children, were killed and 27 others were injured as an autorickshaw carrying schoolchildren bore the brunt of a bomb blast targeting a police mobile van in Pakistan’s restive Balochistan province on Friday.

The blast occurred at 8.35 am near a girl’s high school at the Civil Hospital Chowk of the Mastung district of the province.

Deputy commissioner Mastung Baz Muhammad Marri said in the evening that the death toll has risen to nine.

“Among the deceased are five girls, one boy, one police officer, and two other civilians,” he said.

Earlier, Mastung District Police Officer (DPO) Miandad Umrani confirmed that while seven people, including five schoolchildren, had died on the spot after the blast, one of the injured passed away in a hospital. “The number of injured is around 27 and some civilians themselves took some of the injured to the hospitals,” he said. The initial death toll was seven and injured around 17 but Umrani said the condition of some of the injured was critical as well.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack yet, but ethnic Baloch terrorists and Taliban terrorists often attack the security forces in the province, which has been facing a low-level insurgency for about two decades now.

“The target of the IED bomb triggered via a timer appeared to be a police van stationed near a hospital and a high school which are metres away from each other,” he said.