Peshawar takes yet another hit; 15 dead

A suicide car bombing devastated the Crimes Investigation Agency (CIA) centre in Swati Gate area, near Peshawar Cantonment, on Friday, leaving 15 people dead.

Three policemen and two girls were among the dead. The blast, which took place at about 12.45pm, destroyed the front of the CIA centre and damaged a two-storey mosque on its premises.

Three of the people killed were identified as Manzoor Hussain and his daughters Aasia and Mashal. One of the daughters was a schoolteacher. Hussain was a retired administrative officer of a government college in the Cantonment area. A grade-II student, identified as Shakeem Khan, was also killed in the blast.

The Bomb Disposal Unit’s in charge, AIG Malik Shafqat Mehmud, told reporters that it was a suicide car bomb blast and police had found a severed leg of the bomber. He said that 60-70kg of explosives, mixed with artillery ammunition, had been used in the blast. Engine and chassis numbers of the car were found from the scene.

Confusion surrounded the nature of the blast after city police chief Liaquat Ali Khan told journalists that there were two suicide bombers — one of them a woman accompanied by a man on a bike. The woman detonated explosives strapped to her body when police fired on the man, he added.

Police found an upper part of a female body and assumed that it was that of the suicide bomber, but later it was identified by relatives as one of the daughters of Manzoor Hussain, the man who died along with two daughters.

‘There was no female suicide bomber. It was a misunderstanding,’ SP (Cant Circle) Nisar Marwat said. An investigation was being carried out, but police suspected that it was a suicide car bombing, he added.

The dead policemen were identifies as Amir Nawaz, Ahmed Khan and Zeeshan. DSP Pervez Khattak suffered injuries.

The in-charge of Lady Reading Hospital’s trauma centre, Dr Sahib Gul, told Dawn that 10 of the victims had been identified. Four of the injured, including a police constable, were in serious condition.

Gulbarg police said that 24 people had been injured. An army post and a residential colony for army personnel are located 100 yards away from the CIA centre, which also has offices of the anti-car lifting cell.

Residents said that thick smoke had covered the entire area and they heard gunfire before the blast. It was the fourth suicide blast in the limits of the provincial capital over the past 20 days.
Twelve people were killed when a bomb went off on Fakhr Alam Road on Sept 26. Fifty-four were killed in the Khyber Bazaar blast on Oct 9.

A boy was killed in a car bomb blast at an officers’ block in Gulshan-i-Rehman Colony on Thursday. More than 80 people were killed and 250 injured in the four blasts.