Missed target: 2 dead, 15 injured in Quetta bicycle blast

Explosion occurred near NADRA office on Double road.

QUETTA: Two people were killed and 15 others, including a woman and child, were injured in an bicycle-borne explosion on the busy Double Road in Quetta on Thursday.

Two of the injured were in critical condition.

“[A] police patrol vehicle was passing by the area when the blast occurred. It seems, they wanted to target us,” said Mohammed Shaukat, Station House Officer (SHO) Industrial Police Station.

Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Police Syed Mobin Ahmed said police have started investigations into the incident. “All the injured were passers-bys.”

According to the Bomb Disposal Squad (BDS), around five kilogrammes of explosive material was used in the blast.

The BDS said the Improvised Explosive Device (IED) had been fitted on a bicycle and that the assailants had parked it between two cars parked on Double Road, and detonated through a remote control.

The blast was powerful enough to be heard up to four kilometres away. It damaged three cars and two motorcycles.

No group immediately staked a claim for Thursday’s attack.

Soon after the blast, a heavy contingent of Frontier Corps (FC), police and rescue workers reached the spot and cordoned off the area.

“I was at a distance from the crime scene when the explosion occurred. The ground shook and area was covered with thick smoke. Many people were lying injured on the floor,” said Abdullah, an eye-witness who had sustained minor injuries in the blast. “The area was packed with people and vehicles but after the blast I just saw everyone’s clothes soaked in blood.”

Abdullah, along with other injures were shifted to the Civil Hospital Quetta.

“Two dead bodies and 15 injured people were brought here. Two injured are in critical condition,” said Abdul Rasheed Jamali, medico-legal officer at the hospital. A 22-year-old woman and a 7-year-old child also sustained splinter wounds.

Bodies of the deceased were kept at a morgue for identification.

A large number of people reached the hospital and started looking for their relatives who had gone this area.

Determining culprits

SHO Shaukat said the attacj could be a work of a banned organisation.

“The modus operandi suggests that a banned organisation is behind the attack,” he added.

It is the second bombing on Double road in the last eight months. Five people had been killed and more than 20 had sustained injuries when on October 31, 2013, the banned Baloch United Army (UBA) had detonated a bomb.