String of attacks: Bicycle bomb kills 5 in Quetta

Time-device goes off near a FC vehicle, injuring 30 people including security personnel.

QUETTA:

Five people, including a police constable and a 7-year-old child, were killed and 30 others suffered injuries when a bomb planted on a bicycle went off in Quetta on Thursday morning.

The Capital City Police Officer (CCPO) Abdul Razzaq Cheema confirmed the death toll, saying that the target was a vehicle of paramilitary Frontier Corps (FC) parked on Sirki Road. “Three FC personnel and nine policemen were among the injured,” he said.

He said the improvised explosive device (IED) was attached to a bicycle parked on Sirki Road near the FC vehicle. “The FC personnel were on a routine patrol when the blast occurred,” Home Minister Sarfaraz Bugti said.

Following the blast, rescue workers as well as contingents of police and security forces reached the spot and cordoned off the area.



The FC vehicle was destroyed and three FC personnel received splinter wounds. They had to be shifted to Combined Military Hospital (CMH). The other injured were taken to Sandeman Hospital and Civil Hospital, where state of emergency had already been declared.

“We have received three dead bodies and 27 injured,” a doctor at Sandeman Hospital said. Five vehicles and a few shops were also damaged in the blast, which shattered the windowpanes of the shops and banks.

Home Minister Sarfaraz Bugti said three of the injured were in critical condition.

“Balochistan Home Department had already beefed up security across the province as threats of bomb blast have increased,” he told reporters at Civil Hospital.

Home Secretary Asad Gilani said the modus operandi of the bombing was similar to those which happened in front of City Police Station and Double Road area.

“Initial investigations suggest that the same group might be involved in both the attacks,” he told The Express Tribune, adding that security had been beefed up in the city. Five and six persons, respectively, had died in earlier bicycle blasts at the Double Road and City Police Station.

Balochistan Constabulary vehicle attacked

Just a few hours after Sirki Road blast, unknown persons threw a hand grenade at a vehicle of Balochistan Constabulary (BC) near the Saryab Custom suburb of Quetta. The blast caused injury to a BC man and damaged the vehicle. The attackers fled the scene.

Chaman Blast

Three persons got injured in yet another blast near Christian Colony in Chaman, the Pak-Afghan bordering town.

According to the police, the bomb – mounted on a motorbike – was detonated through a remote-control device. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack till the filing of this report.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 22^nd, 2013.