Three dead in attack targeting President's son in Pakistan: officials

Queta: Three people were killed and four others injured when Baluch separatists targeted a convoy carrying the Pakistani president's son in the southwestern province of Baluchistan late Sunday night, police said.

"An explosive laden motorbike parked at a roadside was blown up with a remote control device when [the] convoy of President Mamnoon Hussain's son, Salman Mamnoon was passing by late Sunday night in Hub Industrial Zone near the border with Karachi," local police official Ghulam Mustafa Shah told AFP Monday.

He said the president's son was unharmed as his vehicle had already passed the spot where the device exploded hitting a rikshaw and the last vehicle of the convoy. "The rikshaw driver, a 12-year-old child in the rikshaw and a passerby died at the spot while four police personnel of the security squad received minor injuries," he said.

Zahid Ullah, a senior police official confirmed the incident and said the president's son owns a dairy farm in the area and is a frequent visitor.

"The president's son was the apparent target of the attack," he said.

Meerak Baluch, spokesman of the Baluch Liberation Army (BLA) claimed responsibility for the attack in a telephone call to AFP. "We claim responsibility for the attack, it was in response to the military operation carried out in various areas of Baluchistan," he said.

Resource-rich Baluchistan is the largest of Pakistan's four provinces, but its roughly seven million inhabitants have long complained they do not receive a fair share of its gas and mineral wealth. Rebels began their fifth insurgency against the state in 2004, with hundreds of soldiers and militants killed in the fighting since then.