Fifteen held after Pakistan bus blast

At least 12 people were killed and 19 injured when the device exploded on a bus travelling from Quetta to Lahore.

Pakistani police on Monday arrested 15 suspects in connection with a deadly bomb blast on a passenger bus in the country's increasingly volatile southwest, officials said.

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At least 12 people were killed and 19 injured on Sunday when the powerful device exploded on a bus travelling from Quetta to Lahore in the neighbouring province of Punjab.

"We have arrested 15 people and also taken the driver of the bus into custody for investigation," Baluchistan police chief Chaudhary Mohammad Yaqub said.

"Police came to the conclusion that the bus bomb blast may be the fallout of the current wave of sabotage activities in Baluchistan," he said.

Sparsely-populated Baluchistan is in the grip of a sporadic insurgency waged by tribesmen who have targeted railway lines, gas pipelines and government and military installations.

"Since the bus was bound for Lahore and it also carried some military personnel, they might have thought that most of the passengers would be Punjabis, so they placed the bomb that caused the casualties," Yaqub said.

Sunday's bomb blast followed a rocket attack allegedly carried out by tribal rebels on the town of Sui on late Saturday, killing six people, including two paramilitary soldiers.