• Shema Ibrahim, Muskan die after battling for life for four days.
• School bus explosion claims at least eight lives .
• PM, COAS vow to bring fight to decisive conclusion.

QUETTA: The death toll in the Khuzdar bus blast rose to eight after two more female students succumbed to their injuries in a hospital on Sunday.

According to security sources, two students —Shema Ibrahim and Muskan — died at the hospital after battling for life for almost four days.

As per the latest update, those lost their lives in the terrorist attack include seven female and one male students.

On May 21, at least five people, including three female students, were killed on the spot and 43 others injured in a suicide attack on a school bus near Zero Point in Khuzdar on the Quetta-Karachi highway when it was on its way to drop the students at the Army Public School in Khuzdar Cantonment.

Hours after the school bus explosion, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir expressed resolve that time has come for Pakistan to show unwavering national resolve, similar to that demonstrated against Indian aggression, to eliminate foreign-sponsored terrorism and bring the fight to a decisive conclusion.

“Pakistan’s security forces and law enforcement agencies will relentlessly pursue all those involved in this barbaric act,” the prime minister was quoted as saying in the official statement during his day-long visit to Quetta to review the law-and-order situation following the terror attack.

PM and the army chief also visited Quetta to meet the victims of the terrorist attack.

The government said that Indian-backed militants carried out the attack, coming almost two weeks after the two sides settled a ceasefire to end their most serious conflict in decades.

According to a press release issued by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), the school bus carrying innocent children was targeted by “Indian-sponsored proxies [Fitna Al Hindustan] which the world has largely come to know as epicentre of instability in the region”.

“The architects, abettors, and enablers of this crime will be held accountable and brought to justice and the truth about India’s cunning role, a real perpetrator of terrorism but feigns as a victim, stands exposed before the world,” it added.

All Indian proxies, facilitators of terror will be decimated

Later on Friday, the army leadership reiterated that all the Indian proxies and facilitators of terrorism would be decimated and dismantled with full force of national will and institutional strength.

Reiterating Pakistan’s strategic stance, the forum declared no one could coerce Pakistan through the use or threat of force and the nation would take all measures necessary to safeguard its vital interests.

Field Marshal Asim Munir chaired the 270th Corps Commanders’ Conference which deliberated in depth on the threat posed by India-backed terrorist proxies operating in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

It was observed that following its military failure in the wake of the Pahalgam incident, India, a so-called and self-claimed victim of terrorism but actually a perpetrator of terrorism and epicentre of regional instability, has upscaled the use of covert means, employing non-state actors to pursue its destabilisation agenda.

The forum resolved that Pakistan would never allow its peace to be compromised by externally sponsored terrorism.

The top military brass maintained that the Pakistan Armed Forces, in close synergy with intelligence and law enforcement agencies, will pursue all proxies and facilitators of terrorism with unrelenting resolve. “These hostile elements, trained and financed to incite chaos and fear, will be dismantled and decimated with full force of national will and institutional strength, InshaAllah,” it reaffirmed.