The Islamic State (IS) on Tuesday claimed responsibility of a deadly attack at the Police Training Academy in Pakistan's Quetta city, local media reported.
The IS' Amaq news agency claimed that the outfit sent three men on Monday night to attack the cadets at the hostel of Sariab Road Police Training Academy, located 20 km away from Quetta, the capital city of the country's southwest Balochistan province.
The Amaq news agency also posted on its website a picture of the men carrying Kalashnikovs and wearing suicide jackets, Xinhua news agency reported.
The mouthpiece said the militants "used machine guns and grenades, and then blew up their explosive vests in the crowd."
Earlier speaking to the media, Maj Gen Sher Afgan, chief of paramilitary Frontier Corps, said the militants belonged to banned outfit Lashkar-e-Jhangvi al-Almi and had got instructions from their handlers in Afghanistan.
The group, however, did not take credit for the attack.
More From This Section
The attack was carried out at about 11.05 p.m. local time on Monday night, and left 59 people killed and over 120 others injured.
This is the second time that the IS has claimed terrorist attack in Quetta since the beginning of this year.
Earlier in August, the group took credit for an attack on a gathering of lawyers at a hospital in Quetta that left 70 persons killed and over 100 injured.
The attack was also claimed by Pakistani Taliban faction Jamaat-ur-Ahrar.
--IANS
ss/vt