Rickshaw bomb blast in Lahore injures 10

Bomb seemed to have exploded prematurely, police say

LAHORE: A bomb blast ripped through a rickshaw in Chauburji area of Lahore injuring at least 10 people.

Police said an improvised explosive device exploded “prematurely” inside the rickshaw on Multan Road near Chauburji Quarters.

They found ball bearings, magnet pieces and a few pieces of the device at the site of the explosion and the bomb disposal squad believes the bomb weighed around three to five kilogrammes.

A police official said the rickshaw driver, 28-year-old Ramzan Wazeer, had picked up a passenger from Shera Kot, a residential area near one of the entry points of the city and dropped him on Multan Road near Samanabad.

The passenger left behind a shopping bag inside the rickshaw. When the driver reached near Chauburji Quarters, he left the vehicle to urinate along the road.

“That is when the blast occurred,” the spokesperson for the Punjab Counter Terrorism Department said.

Besides the driver, nine passersby were also injured in the explosion.

Six of them have been identified as Sadaf Nazeer, 35; Azeem Shoukat, 18; Aleem Akhtar, 49; Asim Mehmood 28; Adeel Basheer, 28; and Saleem Azam, 55.

They suffered minor injuries and were discharged after treatment at different hospitals.

The blast created panic in the locality. The people nearby rushed to the scene and assisted the victims. They also called rescue services, which shifted the injured people to hospitals.

A police investigator told The Express Tribune that bomb seemed to have exploded prematurely.

He added that the blast might have caused much more damage if it had exploded at a busy location.

“According to the bomb disposal squad’s initial assessment, it was an improvised explosive device,” the Punjab CTD spokesperson said.