At least six killed and dozens wounded in a blast targeting a school bus in Khuzdar, Balochistan, officials say.

At least six people have been killed in a blast targeting a school bus in the Khuzdar district of Pakistan’s southwest Balochistan province, an official said.

Balochistan Chief Minister Sarfraz Bugti said four children, the bus driver and his assistant were killed in the attack on Wednesday.

Yasir Iqbal Dashti, a government official in Khuzdar, said at least 38 people were wounded.

“The school bus belonged to Army Public School as it was picking children in the morning when it was attacked,” he told Al Jazeera.

Bugti told a news conference in Quetta that 46 students were on the school bus that was hit by a “vehicle-borne Improvised Explosive Device (IED) attack” according to initial investigations.

“We have been air-lifting the critically injured children to Quetta from Khuzdar,” Bugti said.

He said it was “premature to confirm the nature of the attack” and that further investigations were ongoing.

There was no claim of responsibility for the attack.

Pakistan’s military, in a statement, condemned the violence and accused “Indian terror proxies” of involvement in the attack. It did not share evidence to support the claim.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif “strongly condemned” the attack by “terrorists working under Indian patronage”.

There was no immediate comment from New Delhi.

Sharif also offered his “sympathies” to the families of those who were killed by the “brutality”.

Authorities said the death toll could increase due to the severity of the explosion.

Balochistan province, which is rich in minerals and natural resources, has been home to a decades-long conflict between the government and ethnic Baloch separatists, who demand secession from Pakistan.

Wednesday’s attack came days after a car bombing killed four people near a market in Qillah Abdullah, also in Balochistan.

Many attacks in the province are claimed by the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), which Pakistan says is backed by neighbouring India – a claim New Delhi denies.

Reporting from Islamabad, Al Jazeera’s Kamal Hyder said Pakistan was taking the attack on the school bus “very seriously”.

“The fact that the Baloch Liberation Army, which is a banned outfit, has normally taken responsibility for these attacks – Pakistan says these groups are funded by the Indian intelligence agency,” Hyder said.

“Pakistan and India have, of course, been trading blame every time there is an attack across the border… [but] this is not the first time an attack has taken place in Balochistan province,” he added.

In one of the deadliest attacks claimed by the BLA, its fighters killed 33 people, mostly soldiers, during an assault on a train carrying hundreds of passengers in Balochistan in March.

Earlier this week, the BLA promised more attacks on the “Pakistani army and its collaborators” and said its goal is to “lay the foundation for a peaceful, prosperous and independent Balochistan”.

Armed groups are also active in Balochistan, and though it is unusual for separatists to target schoolchildren in the province, such attacks have been carried out in the restive northwest and elsewhere in the country in recent years.

Most schools and colleges in Pakistan are operated by the government or the private sector, though the military also runs a significant number of institutions for children of both civilians and serving or retired army personnel.

In December 2014, the armed group Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) hit the Army Public School in Peshawar, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, killing more than 140 children.

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Al Jazeera and news agencies