Twin blasts: Grenade attack on cinema leaves 3 dead

40 injured, some of them critically, when two grenades were lobbed inside the cinema.

PESHAWAR: At least three people were killed and 40 injured in a grenade attack on a cinema house in Peshawar on Sunday night.

“Unknown miscreants lobbed two hand grenades inside the main hall of the Picture House cinema,” SP Faisal Mukhtar told The Express Tribune. He confirmed that at least three people were killed in the attack and said more than 25 others were wounded.

However, officials at the Lady Reading Hospital (LRH) – where all the casualties were moved to – said they have received 40 injured. “Some of them are in a critical condition,” said the in-charge of the LRH Casualty Ward, Dr Khizar Hayat.



According to witnesses, the attack took place during the screening of a Pashto movie ‘Ziddi Pakhtun’. Many of the casualties were caused by a stampede sparked  other,” cinema employee Tariq Khan recalled.

“I rushed back to the main hall and saw people trying to escape frantically… many fell to the ground and were trampled,” he said. “I saw my brother bleeding inside the hall… many others were there lying on the ground… it was very difficult to tell the dead from the injured.”

“It took almost 20 minutes for the panicked cinema-goers to vacate the hall,” said Israr, a security guard at a market on Cinema Road, where the Picture House cinema is located. “When I went inside the hall, I saw at least eight people lying among the seats... some were dead and others were injured.”

Israr recalled seeing a suspicious car on the day of the attack and the days leading up to it.

“For the past three days, I saw the same car parked near the cinema,” he said. “I thought no one could watch the same film persistently for three days… I was just discussing that with the shopkeepers when I heard two loud blasts inside the cinema.”

He added that the car was missing when he looked for it roughly half an hour after the incident and believed it was used by the attackers.

According to a police official, initial investigations suggest the attackers were seated on the back row of the main hall. The grenades they threw landed in the middle of the hall, he said.

This is not the first time a cinema in Peshawar has been attacked. Around six people were killed in a blast outside the entrance of the nearby Tasveer Mehal cinema in May 2009.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 3^rd, 2014.