Rocket attacks kill 2, hurt 21 in south Pakistan

Two people have been killed and 20 others injured in two separate rocket attacks in Pakistan’s southwestern province of Balochistan. Police said that a 17-year-old boy was killed and 18 others were wounded on Saturday when a rocket landed in a busy market in the provincial capital Quetta, which is located 700 kilometers (435 miles) southwest of Islamabad. One of the injured later succumbed to his injuries in a hospital. “A boy was killed on the spot and one of the wounded, a man, died at hospital,” senior police official Mohammad Zubair said. In the second attack, a rocket slammed into a house in a Christian neighborhood about a kilometer (0.6 miles) away and injured three family members. Zubair said no group has claimed responsibility for the rocket attacks. However, separatists of the Baloch Republican Army have carried out similar attacks in the past. Despite the Pakistani government's operations against militants and terrorists, they have still been able to spread their influence in various regions of the country and have killed thousands of people. Over 35,000 Pakistanis have lost their lives in bombings and other militant attacks since 2001, when Pakistan entered an alliance with the US in the so-called war against terrorism, according to local media outlets. Since late 2009, there has been a surge in militant attacks in Pakistan. Thousands have been displaced by the wave of violence and militancy sweeping across the country.