Chaman attack: Blast in market injures 12 pedestrians

QUETTA:

At least a dozen pedestrians, including a nine-year-old boy, were injured on Sunday when an improvised explosive device went off on Chaman’s Taj Road.

The head of the police station in Chaman, a town famous for supplying fruits across Pakistan, said a dozen people sustained splinter wounds. Among those critically injured was nine-year-old Mohammed Ikram.

Some unidentified insurgents had placed an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) near a car on Taj Road, a commercial hub lined with shops, SHO Chaman police station Inspector Agha Mohammed told The Express Tribune.

The miscreants detonated the five-kilogram explosive device by remote control, he said.

Police and rescue workers rushed to the site and ferried the injured to Civil Hospital Chaman for treatment.

The intensity of the blast shattered windowpanes of shops and the nearby Bacha Khan shopping centre.

Police and security forces have cordoned off the area after the blast. “We have found the remote control from the crime scene,” SHO Agha Mohammed said. “There is a huge waste-water drain near the blast site and it is likely that the person had come from there to plant the explosives,” he said.

Regarding the possible target of the blast, he said it was too early to comment on the motive of the crime. “All the victims are pedestrians,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 23^rd, 2015.