Pakistan blames Israel for attack on bus

Pakistan has blamed Israel for a devastating suspected suicide bombing attack that targeted a school bus in Khuzdar, on Wednesday, May 21, 2025, resulting in the deaths of four children.

Khuzdar is a city in Pakistan’s south-western province of Balochistan.

Pakistani’s blame on India for orchestrating the attack has heightened already volatile tensions between the two nuclear-armed nations.

The bus was transporting students to the Army Public School in Khuzdar when an assailant rammed a vehicle into the bus and detonated explosives.

Yasir Dashti, the deputy commissioner of Khuzdar, confirmed that along with the four children, the driver and a security guard also lost their lives, and 12 more children were critically injured.

Initial findings strongly point to a suicide bombing.

Among the victims identified were 12-year-old Hifsa Kausar, 16-year-old Esha Saleem, and 12-year-old Sania Somroo.

Authorities are working to identify the fourth child.

No militant organization has claimed responsibility so far, but the Pakistani military’s media wing swiftly issued a statement attributing blame to India.

It stated that the attack had been “planned and orchestrated” by its long-standing rival.

According to the statement, “Indian terror proxies are being employed as a state tool by India to foment terrorism in Pakistan against soft targets such as innocent children and civilians.”

The use of such language signals the gravity with which Pakistan views the incident, linking it directly to state-sponsored terrorism.

The accusations arise during a particularly tense period in India-Pakistan relations.

Earlier in May, both countries came dangerously close to open conflict, exchanging missile and drone strikes across their shared border.

These hostilities followed a deadly attack in April in Indian-administered Kashmir that killed 26 people.

India accused Pakistan-backed militant groups of orchestrating the attack.

It launched retaliatory missile strikes on what it described as “terrorist infrastructure and camps” inside Pakistan.

In turn, Pakistan responded by firing missiles at Indian military targets.

The escalation was halted only by a ceasefire agreement reached on May 10.

Following the ceasefire, the Indian government warned that any future terror attacks on Indian soil would be interpreted as acts of war.

Pakistan has firmly denied any role in the Kashmir attack.

It has also grown increasingly vocal in pointing fingers at India for a series of deadly militant incidents on Pakistani territory.

This is particularly in the violence-ridden provinces of Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The government of Pakistan has long maintained that India uses proxy militant groups to carry out attacks designed to destabilize the country.

In Balochistan, the decades-long insurgency has intensified in recent years.

The Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), a separatist group, has been responsible for a surge in violent acts including suicide bombings and a recent train hijacking.

Meanwhile, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which borders Afghanistan, attacks by the Pakistani Taliban, or Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), have also been on the rise.

Following the attack in Khuzdar, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif echoed the military’s condemnation of India.

“Terrorists operating under Indian patronage attacking innocent children on a school bus is clear evidence of their hostility,” he declared in a public statement.

Shahid Rind, a spokesperson for the Balochistan provincial government, also accused India of sponsoring terrorism.

He denounced the bombing as revealing the “hideous face of Indian state-sponsored terrorism.”

This tragedy has drawn comparisons to one of the deadliest attacks in Pakistan’s history: the December 2014 massacre at an Army Public School in Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

During this attack, TTP militants reportedly killed over 100 schoolchildren.

The recent school bus bombing in Khuzdar has thus reopened deep national wounds.

It has also highlighted the persistent threat militant groups pose to civilians, particularly children.

As Pakistan mourns the loss of young lives, the attack adds to the mounting evidence of the deteriorating security situation in regions already plagued by violence.

It also pushes India and Pakistan further into a cycle of mutual blame and retaliatory posturing, underscoring the fragility of peace between the two neighbors.

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