Survivors claim shrine bomber was a woman

Until now we knew the Middle East-based terrorist group Islamic State has claimed credit for the grisly carnage

KARACHI: Until now we knew that the suicide bomber who killed and maimed dozens of devotees at the shrine of Sufi saint Shah Noorani in Khuzdar district on Saturday night was a teenage boy. Until now we knew the Middle East-based terrorist group Islamic State, or Da’ish, has claimed credit for the grisly carnage.

However on Monday, doubts were cast on both claims. Survivors interviewed by The Express Tribune said the suicide bomber was a woman, while the Balochistan home minister said sectarian extremist group Lashkar-e-Jangvi Al Alami, and not Da’ish or its affiliate Jundullah, was behind the deadly bombing.



“She was a young woman. She was repeatedly saying, ‘aaj tum sab maro gey’ (today, you’ll all die). She was also abusing the saint,” recalls Kazi Rashid, an amateur qawwal from the Liaquatabad area of Karachi who is now recuperating at the Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto (SMBB) Trauma Centre. “She was quarreling with everyone. And then she blew herself up in the middle of devotees performing dhamaal (devotional dance) in the shrine’s courtyard.”

Rashid, along with his and his brother’s family, had gone to pay respects to the saint and to seek his blessings. He doesn’t know that his wife and a son have been killed in the bombing, while his second son and a daughter are also hospitalized for treatment of the injuries they received in the blast. In all, the unlucky families lost six members — two children, two women and two men — and another 10 members are injured.

Sameer Ahmed, a resident of Memon Goth, who also survived the carnage with injuries, endorsed Rashid’s claim that the bomber was a woman. “The bomber was woman. She was sitting among women devotees in the hall where dhamaal session was in progress,” Ahmed says while lying on his bed at the Trauma Centre. “Later my family told me that the media is claiming the bomber was a boy.”

Ahmed recalls that the woman, who he claims was the bomber, was making menacing gestures and hurling warnings at  devotees. “Later she blew herself up,” claims Ahmed who has lost his friend Ahsan Kalmati in the bombing. “After the ear-splitting explosion, there was chaos at the shrine. Bodies lying everywhere and blood splattered all over. One could only hear screams of the injured survivors,” he says. “We were tossed on the ground by the thud of the blast and finally my fourth friend, who luckily remained unhurt, came to rescue me.”

Gul Khatoon, a resident of Kohi Goth, Malir, had travelled to the shrine along with 19 other family members. “Three of my daughters were wounded in the blast. There were no rescuers for three hours. We drove the injured girls in our own car to the nearby shrine of Mohabat Faqir for first aid,” she says. “Later the girls were ferried to the Trauma Centre in Karachi.” Another three members of Khatoon’s family — Lubna, 16, Samreen, 18, and Shehrbano, 35 — were not lucky enough to survive the blast.

Khatoon also describes the bomber as a woman. “She was hot-tempered, quarrelling with everyone. She was repeatedly saying, ‘aaj bohat burra honay wala hai sab kay sath’ (today the worst is going to happen to all of you) and then she blew herself up,” she recalls.

Investigators have said that the bomber was a teenage boy, possibly 16 to 18 years of age. They have found the severed head of the bomber which has been sent for forensic analysis. Security officials insist the bomber was a young man. The shrine Khalifa (caretaker), Dost Muhammad, said on the authority of witnesses and survivors that the bomber had a small beard and long flowing hair.

Intestinally, a threat alert issued by the provincial home department on Nov 5 says “It has been reliably learnt that a lady suicide bomber, age of 17/18, has reached Quetta for some terrorist activity. It is further learnt that two terrorists along with a girl have come from Afghanistan … via Killa Abdullah.”

Da’ish claimed responsibility for the attack the same night and even released via its affiliated Amaq news agency a photo of the purported attacker -- a dark-skinned youth dressed in white tunic with a green backpack. Balochistan Home Minister Mir Sarfaraz Khan Bugti, however, claimed that Lashkar-e-Jangvi Al Alami was behind the bombing.

Speaking at a news briefing, he said that forensic analysis report of the bomber’s head would be received from laboratory in Lahore within two days. “The bomber has yet to be identified,” he added.



The Shah Noorani shrine will remain closed for a month until investigations are completed. “A master plan is being chalked out to provide basic facilities and protection to devotees at the Shah Noorani shrine which envisages construction of walls, roads, and provision of clean drinking water,” he said, adding that the plan would be implemented before the month of Ramzan.

Meanwhile, the provincial government has decided to form a joint investigation team (JIT), headed by the deputy commissioner of Khuzdar, to probe the tragedy. The decision was taken in a meeting on the law and order situation which was chaired by Chief Minister Nawab Sanaullah Zehri.

The meeting also decided to call a special forensic team from Punjab to collect evidence with a view to expedite the investigation process of one of the deadliest attacks in the province. (With additional reporting by Mohammad Zafar in Quetta)

Published in The Express Tribune, November 15^th, 2016.