Quetta
|
Quetta کوئٹہ |
|||
| State : |
 Pakistan
|
||
| Province : | Balochistan | ||
| Coordinates : |
30 ° 11 ′ N , 67 ° 0 ′ E
|
||
| Height : |
1676 m
|
||
| Residents : | 1,001,205 (2017) | ||
| Time zone : | PST ( UTC + 5 ) | ||
| Telephone code : | (+92) 081 | ||
| Postal code : | 87300 | ||
| License plate : | PK
|
||
| Nazim ( Mayor ) : | Me Maqbool Ahmed Lehri | ||
|
|||
Quetta (Urdu:کوئٹہ, Pashto: کوټه, Persian / Baluchian: کویته) is a city in western Pakistan with a population of about 1 million. Quetta is the capital of the Balochistan Province . Members of several ethnic groups live in the city and therefore several languages are spoken. The largest group of the population are the Pashtuns .
Geographical location
The city is located near the border with Afghanistan at an altitude of 1680 meters. The expansion is 2653 square kilometers. Although it is on the western border of Pakistan, it is well connected to the rest of the country in terms of transport.
Climate table
Quetta has a semi-arid and hot, relatively continental climate. In contrast to many other cities in Pakistan, the climate is not significantly influenced by the monsoons . In the winter months, temperatures can drop below 0 ° C and snowfall occurs occasionally.
| Quetta | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Climate diagram | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Average monthly temperatures and rainfall for Quetta
Source: wetterkontor.de
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
population
| language | Proportion of (%) |
|---|---|
| Baluchish | 25.0 |
| Pashtun | 23.7 |
| Punjabi / Saraiki | 21.7 |
| Other or unspecified | 29.6 |
The city of Quetta, like the surrounding district, is multiethnic and multilingual. Although the city is the administrative seat of the province of Balochistan, the Baluchis, which give it their name, are only a minority of the population. Ethnic and linguistic numbers from the last 1998 census are judged to be less reliable than for other major Pakistani cities. This also has to do with the flow of refugees and population movements, especially after 2001 from Afghanistan and the tribal areas and the former Northwestern Frontier Province . According to the 1998 census, roughly a quarter of the population spoke Baluch , Pashtun and Punjabi / Saraiki . Other languages such as Brahui were not recorded in detail. Some statistics assume a relative majority for the Pashtuns as early as 1998, whose share has certainly increased in the meantime due to the refugee movements.
| Census year | population |
|---|---|
| 1972 | 158.026 |
| 1981 | 285.719 |
| 1998 | 560.307 |
| 2017 | 1,001,205 |
history
A Bronze Age grave with rich gifts, the Quetta Treasure , was found during the construction of a hotel in the city in 1985. The name Quetta comes from kwatta , the name of a legendary fortress on Pashto . In the context of the Anglo-Afghan wars , the city was annexed to British India in 1876 . Due to its strategically important border location, a large garrison of 12,000 men (1935) was stationed here. On May 31, 1935, the city experienced a devastating earthquake of about 7.5 magnitudes on the Richter scale , which destroyed large parts of the city and claimed around 30-40,000 lives. After the withdrawal of the British and the partition of India , Quetta came to Pakistan and became the capital of the province of Balochistan.
Security situation
The current security situation in Quetta has been extremely precarious for years. This is largely due to the city's location on the border with Afghanistan and on the fringes of the Pashtun settlement area, which is one of the main areas of activity, recruitment and retreat of the Taliban and other Islamist groups that have repeatedly carried out terrorist attacks. The main target of the terrorists are representatives of state power and state institutions of all kinds, as well as members of the Shiite minority, who predominantly belong to the Hasara ethnic group. The attacks are mostly carried out with bombs and often as suicide attacks .
On December 10, 2004, the city was bombed with a car bomb , killing at least seven people and injuring more than five. On February 9, 2008, it was reported that Osama bin Laden was in the city.
On September 3, 2010, at least 50 participants in a Shiite demonstration in Quetta were killed in a bomb explosion. The Pakistani Taliban took responsibility for the attack.
On the festival of the breaking of the fast in late August 2011, a suicide bomber blew himself up in the parking lot of a Shiite mosque . At least ten people were killed and 22 injured.
On September 7, 2011, a double attack on the home of Farrukh Shehzad , a brigadier general and vice-commander of the border troops, killed between 18 and 24 people, including Shehzad's wife and at least one of his children, and injured 80 others, including the general. First a suicide bomber blew himself up with a car in front of the house and then another one broke into the house and set off an explosives belt. Nothing is known about the perpetrators. However, Shezad was involved in the arrest of Yunis al-Mauretani , a senior member of al-Qaeda , on September 5. The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility for the attack.
On October 4, 2011, 15 people were killed in an attack on a bus in Quetta, which was mostly occupied by members of the Hazara minority . Twelve of them were members of the Hazara. As a result, 400 relatives demonstrated in front of the hospital where the injured were treated against discrimination against their people and accused the Pakistani government of failing to protect them.
On February 16, 2013, at least 83 people died when a bomb exploded in a market in a predominantly Shiite Hasara suburb of Quetta. The al-Qaida- associated Sunni-Islamist terror group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi claimed responsibility for the attack .
On August 8, 2013, a suicide bomber blew himself up at a funeral service for a killed police officer in Quetta. At least 28 people who were present died. The Tehrik-i-Taliban took responsibility for the attack.
On January 13, 2016, a suicide bomber blew himself up near a poliomyelitis vaccination center in Quetta. At least 14 people died, 13 of them police officers who had been deployed to protect the medical staff from Islamist attacks.
On August 8, 2016, at least 66 people were killed and around 200 injured in an attack on hospital grounds ; many of the victims are lawyers. The Jamaat-ul-Ahrar , a splinter group of the TTP, claimed responsibility for the attack .
On October 25, 2016, three terrorists, allegedly members of the Islamic State, attacked the local police academy and killed 60 people, the majority of whom were police trainees there. Two of the perpetrators later blew themselves up, a third was rendered harmless.
At least eight people were killed in the 2017 Quetta attack on the Bethel Memorial Methodist Church on December 17.
economy
Fruit growing is widespread. The significant military location is also an important economic factor. Because of its good transport connections in the sparsely populated Balochistan, the city is an important hub for supplying the western troops in Afghanistan as part of the war in Afghanistan and Operation Enduring Freedom .
traffic
railroad
Quetta is a railway junction. It is connected in Pakistan by the Bolan Railway with Lahore by a 1170 km long route , also with Peshawar (1558 km) and with Karachi (863 km). The Zahedan – Quetta railway (722 km) from Iran also ends here . An extension of the railway line across the border to Afghanistan (15 km) is under construction.
air traffic
There is an international airport in Quetta . This serves Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad and Multan nationally. There are international flights to Dubai and Sharjah and, depending on the season, Jeddah.
Culture
Along with Kandahar and Peshawar, Quetta is the third important center of the Pashtuns. The languages Pashto , Baluchi , Brahui , Sindhi , Punjabi , Urdu and Persian are spoken in Quetta .
In 1970 the University of Balochistan was founded in Quetta.
Personalities
- Shamsul Islam Khan (* 1978), squash player
- Shahid Zaman (* 1982), squash player
- Muhammad Waseem (* 1987), professional boxer
See also
Web links
- English description of the city
- Quetta (archive version) ( Memento of May 27, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
Individual evidence
- ↑ Pakistan: Provinces and Major Cities - Population Statistics, Maps, Charts, Weather, and Web Information. Retrieved January 22, 2018 .
- ↑ World Gatetteer: Quetta ( Memento of the original from December 16, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ District Development Profile: Quetta. (PDF) Planning and Development Department of the Government of Balochistan in cooperation with UNICEF, 2011, accessed on August 9, 2016 (English).
- ^ A b Jonah Blank, Christopher Clary, Brian Nichiporuk: Drivers of Long-Term Insecurity and Instability in Pakistan: Urbanization. Rand National Defense Institute, 2014, ISBN 978-0-8330-8750-8 , p. 29.
- ↑ Glynn Brown: The Great Quetta Earthquake 31st May 1935. 2000, accessed on August 9, 2016 (English).
- ^ N-tv news from February 9, 2008
- ↑ Quetta rally suicide bomb kills dozens. In: BBC News. September 3, 2010, accessed August 9, 2016 .
- ^ Deaths in suicide attack in Pakistan. In: ORF . August 31, 2011, accessed August 31, 2011 .
- ↑ 24 dead in a double attack in Pakistan. In: ORF . September 7, 2011, accessed September 7, 2011 .
- ↑ Dead in attack in Quetta. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . September 7, 2011, accessed September 7, 2011 .
- ^ Double attack in Pakistan. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . September 7, 2011, accessed September 7, 2011 .
- ^ Double attack in Pakistan. In: Frankfurter Rundschau . September 7, 2011, accessed September 7, 2011 .
- ↑ Extremists shoot bus passengers. In: Frankfurter Rundschau . October 4, 2011, accessed October 4, 2011 .
- ↑ Scores dead in Pakistan sectarian attack. al Jazeera, February 17, 2013, accessed August 9, 2016 .
- ↑ Pakistan: Dozens dead in bomb attack on Quetta market. In: BBC News. February 17, 2013, accessed August 9, 2016 .
- ↑ Suicide attack on Quetta funeral kills at least 30. In: dawn.com. December 28, 2013, accessed August 9, 2016 .
- ↑ Syed Ali Shah: Blast near Quetta polio center kills 14; TTP claims responsibility. In: dawn.com. January 13, 2016, accessed August 9, 2016 .
- ↑ At least 66 dead in an attack in the clinic ( memento of the original from August 8, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: Deutschlandfunk . August 8, 2016. Retrieved August 8, 2016.
- ↑ Terrorists storm the police school - 60 dead. Article in the Nordwest-Zeitung on October 25, 2016. Accessed October 25, 2016.
- ↑ See: here .
- ^ Homepage of the University of Balochistan .
