Bomb damages short stretch of railway track in Pakistan

A small homemade bomb damaged a short stretch of railway track Tuesday in southwestern Pakistan, but no injuries were reported, a police official said. Hamid Shakil, a senior police official, said an 18-inch (half-meter) section of track on the Karachi-Quetta line was destroyed just after midnight where the rail line passes through the Baluchistan University campus in Quetta, the capital of southwestern Baluchistan province.

"Just 10 minutes before the explosion, a goods train from Quetta to Kolpur passed through that point, which has been repaired and traffic is restored," rail official Mahboob Ahmed told The Associated Press. Sparsely populated Baluchistan has been the scene of small-scale bombings and attacks in recent years. Local tribesmen, mainly ethnic Baluch nationalists demanding increased royalties for resources extracted from the sprawling province and opposing establishment of new military garrisons in their areas, have been blamed, reports the AP. I.L.