(MENAFN- The Peninsula) Militants lobbed grenades at two small businesses and a private school in three separate attacks in Pakistan yesterday, killing at least five people and wounding 12, officials said.
The first two incidents, which police said were ethnically motivated, took place in the southwest where a separatist insurgency is raging.
They killed four people and wounded 11.
A female teacher and a girl died in the third attack, which took place at a coeducational school in the restive northwest where the Taliban are violently opposed to secular education.
In the first attack a grenade exploded in a crowded barber's shop in the main market of Quetta, capital of Baluchistan province where a separatist insurgency has been waged since 2004.
"Four people riding two motorbikes arrived at the salon on the main double road of the city and lobbed two grenades on the shop," Aitezaz Goraya, a senior police official said.
"After the grenade attack, they fired shots at the people present at the shop," he added.
Rashid Jamali, a medical officer at a nearby government hospital, said three people died while 10 more were injured.
The second attack targeted a photo studio on Quetta's Sariab Road.
"One person was killed and another got injured in this attack," said Imran Qureshi, a senior police official in the area.
Police said both businesses were probably attacked because they were owned by Punjabis - Pakistan's biggest ethnic group which has traditionally dominated the army, bureaucracy and political parties. No group immediately claimed responsibility but Baluch separatists are active in the area.
They often attack government forces, installations and people who have been settled in Baluchistan from Punjab.
In the final attack, also yesterday, unidentified militants hurled two grenades at a private school in Pakistan's northwestern town of Charsadda, killing a female teacher and wounding a girl.
Shafiullah Khan, a senior police officer, said the attack happened at the end of the school day when teachers were sitting in the staff room.
"One female teacher was killed and a girl student was wounded," he said.
Pakistani militant groups are particularly opposed to girls' education in the northwest, where they have bombed hundreds of schools in recent years.
Terrorism in Pakistan has become a major and highly destructive phenomenon in recent years.
The annual death toll from terrorist attacks has risen from 164 in 2003 to 3318 in 2009 with a total of 35,000 Pakistanis killed between September 11, 2001 and May 2011.
According to the government of Pakistan, the direct and indirect economic costs of terrorism from 2000€2010 total $68bn.
President Asif Ali Zardari, along with former President ex-Pakistan Army head Pervez Musharraf, have admitted that terrorist outfits were 'deliberately created and nurtured' by past governments 'as a policy to achieve some short-term tactical objectives.'
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