The blast on Monday in the city of Quetta targeted a passenger bus stationed at the terminal with some 40 passengers on board.

The explosion came as night fell and labourers working in central Quetta left for their homes on the outskirts of the city, which has frequently been targeted by terrorists and separatist insurgents.

"The death toll from the bus explosion is 11, while 22 people are injured," Akbar Hussain Durrani, home secretary of Baluchistan province, told AFP.

A senior police official and a doctor at the city's main hospital confirmed the causalities.

On October 14, a powerful bomb explosion struck political office of Sardar Amjad Farooq Khosa from the conservative Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party in Punjab province, leaving seven dead.

Thousands of Pakistanis have lost their lives in bombings and other militant attacks since 2001, when Pakistan entered an alliance with the US in the so-called war on terror. Thousands more have been displaced by the wave of violence and militancy sweeping the country.

Pakistan has been waging a major offensive against militant hideouts across the troubled northwestern tribal regions since June last year, when a deadly raid on the Karachi International Airport ended the government’s faltering peace talks with the militants.

Pakistan’s army intensified its military operations after pro-Taliban elements killed over 150 people, most of them children, in an armed assault on a school in Peshawar in December 2014; AFP reported.

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