Targeted again?: Two children hurt in school bombing

Around 250 grammes of explosives were used.

KARACHI:

Two children were hurt on Friday when unidentified men lobbed a ball packed with explosives at a school in Orangi Town and then sped off.

DSP Zahid Hussain said the blast’s intensity was relatively low because of the quality of explosive material used. The incident is the second of its kind in district West within two months. On March 30, Abdul Rasheed Khan, the principal of a private secondary school in Baldia’s Ittehad Town, was killed and several children, including his daughter, hurt when a bomb was thrown at the institution after which armed men stormed it and opened fire. Khan was also the vice president of Awami National Party’s district West division.



This time the target was Government Boys Primary School Baitul Firdous, located in Baloch Goth, Sector 7C, Orangi Town.

The bomb, packed with around 250 grammes of explosive material, went off as it hit the school’s boundary wall and didn’t do any major damage.

More than 100 students from grades one to five were present along with the school’s headmaster, Syed Nizamuddin. The school has been housed in the four-room building in Baloch Goth since 1984.



Zahir Gul, a personnel present at the Orangi Town police station, said the two injured students, 10-year old Izhar Ahmad and seven-year-old Fatima, were taken to the Qatar hospital and discharged after first aid treatment. “It appears that the purpose was only to threaten the school’s staff and create panic.

But this cannot be confirmed at the moment,” said Gul as he added that investigations into the incident were under way.

An alarming trend

Last week educationist and social activist Abdul Waheed was shot dead on May 13 by unidentified men outside his medical store in Islamia Colony, Manghopir. Waheed ran a private educational institution, Naunehal Public School in SITE Town, situated close to the infamous Kati Pahari. After attacking Waheed, the suspects threw a bomb to cause a commotion, allowing them to get away easily.

At the start of this month, two watchmen at the Belgian missionary school located in Manghopir’s Sultanabad area were shot dead by motorcyclists who drove into the school.

Ghulam Bashir Channa, the president of Government Secondary Teachers Association’s Karachi chapter, said, “Such incidents instill a sense of insecurity among teachers at public schools. They already work under low incentives.” He added that it is the government’s responsibility to provide security to public schools established in sensitive areas. “If they don’t do this, parents would not send their children to these schools.”

Published in The Express Tribune, May 25^th, 2013.