QUETTA, Pakistan, Jan 18 (AFP) - Two bombs went off in a southwest Pakistani city where a huge multi-million dollar deep sea port is being built, causing panic but no casualties, police said Tuesday.
Residents in Gwadar on the Arabian Sea coast, some 750 kilometres (466 miles) southwest of Quetta, were woken up by two home-made bombs late Monday night, a local police official told AFP by telephone.
The first bomb was planted in a dustbin near a hotel and the second was some 20 yards (meters) away, he said. Neither caused any damage.
Gwadar has frequently been hit by rocket and bomb attacks which officials blame on people opposed to development projects in southwest Baluchistan province.
A spokesman for a little known group called the Baluch Liberation Army phoned Quetta press club and claimed responsibility for the blasts.
In May last year three Chinese engineers were killed near the port project when a car bomb blew up next to their van.
In another incident on Sunday night, a bomb exploded under a car hired by the Pakistani Army's Frontier Works Organisation, which is building a highway linking Gwadar to the southern port city of Karachi. No one was injured.
Separately, militants fired three rockets at paramilitary troops early Monday near Bolan, some 75 kilometres (46 miles) south of Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan, again with no casualties.
Late Tuesday a bomb exploded outside district administrator's office while militants fired a rocket on a paramilitary facility in Naushki, about 120 kilometers (74 miles) southwest of Quetta, but there were no casualties.
A low-level uprising has been brewing for years in sparsely populated but resource-rich Baluchistan.
Rebel tribesmen last week rained rockets on Pakistan's main natural gas field at Sui, killing eight people and suspending the gas supply to millions of Pakistani homes and hundreds of industrial units.
01/18/2005 17:25 GMT - AFP