QUETTA: Pakistani passengers help an injured train blast victim as they arrive at a railway station yesterday. — AFP

QUETTA/MULTAN/PESHAWAR: A bomb planted on the track killed at least one train passenger and wounded four others in Pakistan's restive southwestern province of Balochistan yesterday, officials said.

The improvised explosive device exploded as the Jaffar Express from Rawalpindi passed over it 180 kilometers east of Quetta, local security official Naseer Ullah told AFP. "A passenger was killed and four others were wounded and moved to hospital," he said. A three-feet section of the track was destroyed by the bombing, which hit the second carriage.

The injured were taken to hospital in the town of Sibbi 25 kilometers north of the blast site. A provincial home minister official in Quetta confirmed the details. There was no immediate claim of responsibility but Taliban militants are active in the region.

Quetta is the capital of Balochistan province, which is also home to a separatist insurgency that has been raging since 2004. The province's roughly seven million people have long complained they do not receive a fair share of its gas and mineral wealth.

Roof Collapse

A Pakistani official says a roof that was under construction at a religious school collapsed, killing five students. Local rescue official Natiq Hayyat says nine students were also injured in the incident in the central district of Dera Ghazi Khan yesterday.

Hayyat says all the victims have been taken to hospital. The cause of the collapse was not clear. Pakistan has been hit by flash floods triggered by weekend rains that have killed 71 people in the country's northwest. Flash floods commonly occur during South Asia's summer monsoon season.

Flood death toll rises

The death toll after heavy rains in Pakistan's northwest and in Kashmir rose to 71 Tuesday, officials said, as rescuers sought to evacuate dozens of people still trapped by landslides.

Ten more people were found dead in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa after the weekend downpour triggered landslides and collapsed the roofs of dozens of houses.

"The number known to have died in rains so far in the northwest has now risen to 61 with over 350 houses damaged all over Khyber Pakhtunkhwa," a spokesman for the local disaster management authority said in a statement.

At least 30 people were still stranded following a heavy landslide in the area of Khoistan, he said. While in Pakistani-held Kashmir, dozens of local tourists remained marooned in the picturesque Neelum Valley as authorities attempted to evacuate them, a local official there told AFP.

At least 10 people have been confirmed killed there since the rain began Saturday. "My children are sitting under the open sky. My cattle and belongings were trapped under the debris," local resident Nasim Atakhar told AFP after her house collapsed. Poorly built homes across Pakistan, particularly in rural areas, are

susceptible to collapse during the annual spring rains, which are often heavy. Severe weather in recent years has killed hundreds and destroyed huge tracts of prime farmland. During the rainy season last summer, torrential downpours and flooding killed 81 people and affected almost 300,000 people across the country.-Agencies