Continuing violence: Nine killed in Peshawar blast

Taliban deny involvement; election office blown up in Miramshah.

PESHAWAR:

A powerful bomb tore through a passenger coach in the crowded Mattani Bazaar Saturday afternoon, killing nine people and wounding another 10.

The coach was en route to Sherakera village, on the outskirts of Peshawar, from Scheme Chowk on Kohat Road, and the bomb went off when it was passing through Mattani Bazaar, police said.

“Bomb Disposal Squad (BDS) officials told me that it was a timed device,” said senior police official Fazal Wahid. BDS official Abdul Haq told The Express Tribune that the explosive device, weighing around six kilogrammes, was planted on the roof of the coach.

“The casualties were taken to the Lady Reading Hospital (LRH) in Peshawar. We received nine bodies and 10 injured people – three of them have life-threatening wounds,” said Dr Arshad Javed, the chief executive of the LRH.

Eyewitness Fazal Amin said he was shopping in Mattani Bazaar when the explosion took place. “The entire market shook for a moment, and a thick cloud of dust and smoke enveloped the area,” he told The Express Tribune. “I rushed to the spot and saw residents pulling out casualties from the vehicle which caught fire after the explosion.” Amin added that he also pulled out three bodies from the coach.

“Fifteen minutes later, a police contingent reached the spot and started firing into the air, causing people to run in panic,” he said. “We told them to stop firing and help us shift the casualties to the hospital.”

Another witness said that the passenger coach was moving when the explosion took place. “It [the coach] stopped for a while in the market and the blast took place some minutes after it took on passengers,” shopkeeper Subhanullah, who sustained an injury on his left shoulder, told AFP from his hospital bed.

The coach driver, Jehangir, said he lost control over the vehicle after the blast as its brakes apparently failed. “I and my helper, Meraj, jumped off the coach after it caught fire,” Jehangir told The Express Tribune. “When the smoke cleared I saw a big hole in the roof of my coach,” he added.

Some of the passengers hailed from Adezai village which has been frequently targeted by a local faction of militants, called Tehreek-e-Taliban Adezai, for raising a Lashkar  to aid government efforts against the Taliban insurgency in 2008.

Driver Jehangir believed the Adezai villagers could have been the target. The local police concurred, saying militants might have targeted the coach because Adezai villagers were travelling in it, they said.

The outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which has claimed credit for most acts of terrorism in the country, denied involvement in Saturday’s blast. “We don’t target civilians. It could be the work of an ‘enemy’,” TTP spokesperson Ehsanullah Ehsan told The Express Tribune by the phone. He did not elaborate on who that ‘enemy’ may be.

Hours earlier, the election office of a former lawmaker was blown up in Miramshah Bazaar, in the North Waziristan tribal region.

Around 4:45am a huge explosion occurred in the office of Malik Kamran, former MNA from NA-40 (Tribal Area-V), reducing the building to a heap of rubble, an official of the local administration told The Express Tribune.

A local grocery shop owner, Din Muhammad, said the blast also damaged a mosque adjacent to the office of Malik Kamran, who is standing in next month’s election as an independent candidate.

In neighbouring South Waziristan, a little-known militant group warned election candidates on Saturday against aerial firing during their rallies. The warning was issued through pamphlets distributed in the main Rustam Bazaar of Wana, the main town of South Waziristan Agency.

“All election candidates are hereby informed that they should avoid aerial firing and use of firecrackers on their campaign trails. Violators [of this ban] and tribesmen of the area where violation takes place will be fined,” read the pamphlet written in Urdu. It was issued by the Amirul Mujahideen Group of Wana – an area where the Mullah Nazir Taliban Group holds sway.

The warning came a day after an Awami National Party candidate for NA-41 (Tribal Area-VI) defied threats from the TTP and staged an election rally.

Violence has surged ahead of the historic polls which the TTP has vowed to sabotage because the group considers representative democracy ‘un-Islamic’.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, April 14^th, 2013.