Pakistan violence: Gunmen storm Quetta hospital

Gunmen have attacked a hospital in the western Pakistani city of Quetta, hours after an explosion on a bus killed 14 female university students.

Officials say four gunmen were killed during a siege of part of the hospital where the wounded are being treated.

Nurses, hospital security personnel and a senior city official were among the 10 others killed in the stand-off.

An extremist Sunni militant group, Laskar-e-Jhangvi, told the BBC it carried out both attacks.

A man calling describing himself as a spokesman for the group said they were a revenge for an earlier raid by security forces against the group in which a woman and children were killed.

Quetta is the capital of Balochistan province, which has seen a surge in militant violence in recent months.

The latest violence began when a bomb exploded on a bus carrying female students at a university.

"It was an improvised explosive device placed in the women university bus," police chief Zubair Mahmood said.

Later explosions rocked the medical centre where the students were being treated.

Militants armed with grenades were positioned there and exchanged fire with members of the security forces who rushed to the scene.

Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said a subsequent siege ended after security forces stormed the building.

Mr Ali Khan said security forces freed 35 people trapped inside the building, killed four of the attackers and arrested another.

Quetta Police Chief Mir Zubair told the BBC that suicide bombers were involved in the attack, with one blowing himself up during the stand-off with security forces.

Mr Zubair said the hospital was a big medical complex and had suggested it could take a few hours to totally clear the area.

Pakistani officials say a senior Quetta official, Abdul Mansoor Khan, who had gone to the hospital to visit the wounded students, was killed in the stand-off.

The violence came hours after militants carried out a rocket attack against a historic home in the Ziarat area of Balochistan, which was used by Pakistan's founding father Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

The house is said to have been severely damaged.

Quetta is the capital of Balochistan province, which has seen a surge in militant violence in recent months.

Some attacks are carried out by separatists and others by Islamists who oppose women's education.

Last month the Taliban killed at least 11 people in an attack on security forces in Quetta.