Eleven people are dead and six others have been injured following a bomb targeting a vehicle carrying coal miners in southwestern Pakistan, officials say.
The truck had brought the workers to a mine in the Harnai area of Balochistan province, where Pakistan is battling a separatist insurgency.
"An improvised explosive device was planted at the road side which exploded when truck carting coal miners reached the site," a paramilitary official said.
The official, who declined to be identified, added that it may have been a remote operated device.
The region's deputy commissioner, Hazrat Wali Agha, said 17 miners were in the truck when the bomb went off.
A doctor at the local hospital said two of the wounded are in critical condition.
No group has claimed the responsibility but sub-nationalist militants in Balochistan often target security forces and civilians.
The Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), a militant group of ethnic Baloch guerillas that is fighting for independence from Pakistan, was a prime suspect, another police officer said.
Balochistan government spokesperson Shahid Rand said an investigation had been launched.
Pakistan's Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi strongly condemned the blast, saying "beasts who target innocent people do not deserve any concession".
In October, a group of gunmen stormed a coal mine in the region, killing at least 20 labourers.
Much of the violence is seen as targeting Chinese projects in Pakistan aiming to connect its Xinjiang region with the Arabian Sea to reach markets in the Middle East, Europe, Africa and beyond.
Baloch militant and political groups accuse China of stealing their land and resources including several hundred kilometres of shore.
Mineral-rich Balochistan, which borders Iran and Afghanistan, has been the scene of a decade-old insurgency by separatist ethnic Baloch groups.
with EFE
