Militancy in Bannu: Suicide attack on police station leaves 10 injured

Local leader of the JUI-F was shot dead by gunmen in Nowshera.

BANNU:

A suicide bomber drove a vehicle rigged with explosives into a police station on the outskirts of Bannu city on Tuesday morning, injuring 10 people, including civilians.

“Around 5:50am a suicide bomber rammed an explosive-laden double-cabin pickup into the boundary wall of Hawaid police station,” Waqar Ahmed, the district police officer (DPO) of Bannu, told The Express Tribune. The explosion was heard within a radius of several kilometres.

Local residents rushed to the site for rescue and relief work – but they were held back by heavy gunfire that followed the suicide attack.

Later, the casualties were driven to the nearby District Headquarters Hospital where they were identified as SHO Inspector Gul Nawaz Marwat, his driver Aurangzeb, Elite Force constables Liaqat, Aurangzeb Khan and Fahmidullah, Frontier Constabulary personnel Aizazullah and civilians Abdul Baqi, Ziaullah, Mirzabana Bibi and Jehana Bibi. According to Bomb Disposal Squad official Wasal Khan, the vehicle was rigged with 500 kilogrammes of explosives. He added that around 10 houses situated near the police station were destroyed and damaged in the blast.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack – but in the past similar attacks on law enforcers were carried out by militants of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan.

Meanwhile a local leader of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) was shot dead by gunmen in Nowshera district on Tuesday. The JUI-F chief for Bara Bhanda union council, Maulana Mirwali, was returning home from his madrassa when masked gunmen shot him dead, according to the FIR registered with Risalpur police by the victim’s son Hafiz Muhammad Asim.

“Maulana Mirwali was shot multiple times at point-blank range,” a police official told The Express Tribune. He added that they have mounted a manhunt for the killers.

Incensed by the broad daylight murder, a large number of people, including JUI-F activists and Maulana Mirwali’s students, staged a vociferous protest. (With additional reporting by our correspondent in Risalpur)

Published in The Express Tribune, December 5^th, 2012.