DHA Phase II bomb blast: Neighbourhood initially shaken up but goes back to life soon after

College of Surgeons and Physicians holds exams on time.

KARACHI: The residents of DHA Phase II had good reason to believe that their neighbourhood was the most peaceful because their locality stayed calm even during the riots that followed Benazir Bhutto’s assassination.

This perception evaporated, however, on Tuesday morning when they woke up to a loud explosion and a thick cloud of smoke that hovered above. Kamran Niazi, a resident, saw the faces of some his neighbours for the first time as they all came rushing out in their night suits and slippers.

The explosion was a bomb blast in an attack on a navy bus. Just minutes earlier a similar attack was orchestrated in Baldia. Within the Niazi house, which is located hardly a few yards away from the blast site, Kamran and his two children were just getting ready for work and school. The power went out.

“I was certain it was something big so I hurried to my balcony, where I saw a huge cloud of smoke,” he recalled. The drivers, guards and gardeners from the entire street were rushing towards the cloud of smoke. For a while, there was chaos and people did not know what had happened. “Our first guess was that a cylinder had exploded but when people saw the bus, we heard them saying that it was a bomb blast,” he said. “Overall, it took us hardly five to seven minutes to understand that a navy bus had been attacked.”

Kamran could not find out how intense the blast was because there was no electricity so he went online to catch the live television coverage. Thirty minutes after the bomb went off, the power supply came back on and with it life returned to normal for many residents.

Kamran did not cancel his appointments for the day and his wife, Sana, went to drop the children at school as usual. She did, however, take a different route to Mrs Haq’s Academy. Their youngest child, Ayaan, was scared when he saw the smoke but his mother assured him that a tyre had burst.

Just three hours after the attack, Tabassum, who lives in the lane across the one where the bus exploded, left her house to run some errands. She was not afraid to leave the house, where she had left her children. “It has already happened, now what?” she asked casually.

Kamran Ansari, another resident, was much closer to the crime scene. “I was sleeping when I heard a loud noise that sounded like woofers and my windows started vibrating before the glass shattered.”

Some students of Bahria Model School in Sabir SRE Naval Colony paid a visit to the blast site when their parents told them their school bus would not be able to come.

With a short detour, Shahzeb, Abdullah, Umar Saeed and Osama decided to walk to school where classes began on time.

“I knew immediately that it was a blast,” said Shahzeb, who is in class VII. He remembers a similar situation a few months ago when a blast occurred in Cantt.

Soon after the explosion, there was an announcement made by the Pakistan Navy that all parents would have to pick their children from school as the navy bus services had been suspended for security reasons.

Exams held on time

The College of Physicians and Surgeons, Pakistan (CPSP) is located close to the blast site but the administration stuck to its promise that “no exam would be cancelled regardless of the conditions in the city”.

Not even one student missed the CPSP Part II vivas for cardiology, microbiology and prosthodontics that were scheduled from 8:30 am to 3:30 pm. However, 14 per cent of the staff could not come, said CPSP operations general manager Rashed Anis.

Usually, the students and staff members come to the college around the time the blast occurred but none of them were injured, he said. “Some of our staff was sent back by the police when they blocked the roads, but we asked them to let our people in as we were not closing down,” he added.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 27^th, 2011.