Pakistan hospital standoff over, gunmen shot dead after bus blast

Pakistan police stormed a hospital in Quetta on Saturday, ending a standoff with armed gunmen that began hours earlier after a bus blast killed at least 11 people.

The violence began when militants destroyed a house once lived in by Pakistan's founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, in the mountain resort town of Ziarat that has become a national monument, the Washington Post reported.

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A police officer was killed trying to defend the building, which was destroyed in the blast.

That attack was followed by an explosion in Quetta that ripped through a nearby bus carrying female university students, killing at least 11 and wounding 19.

Militants then exploded a bomb outside the emergency room at Quetta's Dolan Medical College hospital, where the students were taken, leaving five people dead, according to The Associated Press.

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Pakistani officials told BBC News four of the gunmen were killed after police stormed the building five hours later.

Nurses, hospital security and a city official were among the 10 others reported dead in the siege.

An extremist Sunni militant group, Laskar-e-Jhangvi, told the BBC it carried out the bus blast and hospital attack.

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