MMA star Bashir Ahmad narrowly escapes death in Lahore bomb blast

ONE FC veteran was at the bomb site minutes before the blast took place

KARACHI: Lahore was once again the victim of terrorism on Thursday when a bomb ripped through an under-construction building in the Defence Z Block area, killing eight and injuring 21 others.

Minutes before it all went down, mixed martial arts fighter Bashir Ahmad was in close proximity of the bombsite.

The 34-year-old Bashir had paid a visit to a hair salon and no sooner had he left the facility that the bomb went off.

"My driver told me it was a transformer blast but because of my military experience I knew that the vibration in the area was that of a bomb," Bashir, a former US Army medic and a veteran of the Afghan war, told The Express Tribune "There was just so much damage, nothing but a bomb could've caused such destruction."

Bashir, often credited as the man who brought MMA to the country, took to social media to condemn the incident. "What kind of demented thought process justifies a random bombing," he wrote on his Facebook page before declaring: "We are going to take these cowards on together as a nation. And I mean cowards."

Bashir further revealed that the car, in which the bomb was planted, had been parked at the site since the previous night and had already drawn suspicious glances from people.