Hawzah News Agency (Quetta, Pakistan) - A bomb targeting a Shia community killed 16 people and wounded scores more in southwestern Pakistan on Friday, officials said, in the first sectarian attack in months.

The bomb went off in a fruit market owned and run by members of the Hazara minority in the city of Quetta, local police chief Abdul Razzaq Cheema said.

Nearly 30 people were wounded in the attack, Cheema added.

Some of the injured people were in a critical condition, rescue worker Abdul Hamid Achakzai said, hinting that the death toll might go up.

Members of the Shia Hazara minority have in the past been targeted by extremist militant groups, including ISIL, in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In Quetta, members of the community, who are confined to a couple of neighborhoods, have frequently been targeted in the past years. The last few months, however, had been peaceful.