Pakistan Security Forces Free 35 in Hospital Siege

The siege of a hospital in southwestern Pakistan has ended after security forces stormed the building, the country's interior minister says. Forces freed 35 people trapped inside the building, killed four of the attackers, and arrested another, notes Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan. He says four security forces and one top government official died during today's violence, which saw attackers set off a bomb in a corridor in the hospital's emergency room before taking over areas of the hospital.

The violence in the province of Baluchistan started when a blast ripped through a bus carrying female university students. At least 11 people died in the incident, and another 19 were wounded, said a police chief. As family, friends, and rescuers crowded the emergency room where the dead and wounded were taken, the blast went off in the corridor. A top government official was killed and two other people wounded in the explosion, said an official. It was not immediately clear if the bus and hospital events were related, but militants often stage coordinated attacks in order to target rescuers and others as they flood to the hospital. (More Pakistan stories.)