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Suicide car blast in Lahore kills 23
By Muhammad Faisal Ali No one immediately claimed responsibility for the latest bombing. Police said one suspect was detained. — AFP
LAHORE: Terrorists struck Lahore for the third time in as many
months with the emergency response police bearing the brunt of a
brutal suicide attack on Wednesday that left a total of 23 people
dead. Among the dead were 16 policemen, an army officer and many civilians including a 12-year-old boy. Officials at the city morgue said two of the bodies were as yet identified. More than 251 others were injured, rescue services were looking for survivors trapped in the rubble late into the night. It was feared that the death toll may also rise. The incident took place at a heavily guarded entry point to the offices of Rescue-15 and the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) as well as to the official residences of police officers at the Plaza Cinema Chowk at around 10:10am. The buildings are adjacent to the offices of Lahore’s police chief and are only yards away from the old Freemason’s Hall where the Punjab chief minister has his secretariat. Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif was at his Defence residence at the time of the explosion.
It couldn’t be confirmed whether or not the capital
city police chief, Pervaiz Rathore, was in his office at the time of
the blast. The third accomplice rammed the explosive-laden van into the barrier when the security officials returned their fire, witnesses and police said. The driver of the van managed to break first the barrier and blew the vehicle up at the second after failing to penetrate the police defence.
'I saw a white van parked near the barriers,' said
Khalilur Rehman, who works as a cleaner at a car show room at
Queen’s Road. 'A young man, who appeared to be in his 20s,
disembarked and opened fire in all directions. The firing continued
for a couple of minutes and then there was a big explosion. We were
left benumbed.' Witnesses said the firing went on for several minutes after the blast. It was later explained as a defensive ploy by the security officials. The toll of the explosion was heavy. No less than 70 vehicles and motorcycles and dozens of adjacent and nearby buildings, mostly used for shops and offices, were damaged. The blast caused damage to property in a radius of two kilometers while the explosion was heard by people several kilometers away. Rescuers moved fast to recover the injured and the dead from under the debris and shifted the injured to various city hospitals where an emergency had been declared. A senior army officer present in the ISI office at the time of the blast was killed while another officer was said to be in a stable condition in hospital. The Pakistan Army and Rangers were in charge of the operations at the blast site. Troops took positions on rooftops in the nearby buildings. The army’s medical unit carried out rescue activity along with the civilian Rescue-1122 and Edhi. A senior police officer, who did no want to be named, told Dawn the police had taken some suspects into custody for interrogation. He said the building collapse destroyed the police CCTV cameras and were thus denied help from CCTV footage. Quoting the bomb disposal squad officials, he said the terrorists used around 125 kg explosives. This was the third serious terror attack in Lahore since the March 3 assault on the Sri Lankan cricketers at Liberty Roundabout. On March 30, terrorists besieged a police training school in Manawan, a suburb of Lahore, for many hours. In the wake of Wednesday’s attack, a possible security lapse by the government was again a moot point. Dawn: Wednesday, 27 May, 2009 Suicide attack in Lahore: Eye-witness accounts
An injured police officer is rescued by rescue workers at the site of suicide car bombing in Lahore. —AP Two eye-witnesses of today’s suicide car bomb blast in Lahore told DawnNews they saw two armed men on foot outside the site of the explosion. A lawyer at the Lahore District Bar and his son were in their car on Lahore’s Fatima Jinnah road when they saw the two terrorists firing indiscriminately outside the Rescue 15 building and ran for cover. ‘As soon as we were inside a nearby building, we heard a loud explosion. It went off within a minute after we saw the terrorists firing in all directions,’ said the lawyer. He added that he spotted a Toyota Hiace van nearby, which could have been the vehicle used in the blast. According to the witnesses, they saw 10 to 15 dead bodies inside the Ganga Ram hospital, where they rushed to receive medical aid for their injuries. Dawn: Wednesday, 27 May, 2009 |
