KARACHI: City police chief terms blast suicide attack
By Our Staff Reporter
KARACHI, April 12: Police on Wednesday claimed that a suicide bomber was behind the explosion at Nishtar Park on Tuesday evening that killed 47 people and injured 103 others.
City police chief Niaz Siddiqui said that 46 people died in the incident. Twenty-seven bodies were shifted to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, 14 to the Civil Hospital and four to the Liaquat National Hospital, besides the unidentified head found from the spot.
He said that a total of 104 people were wounded in the tragedy and 79 of them were admitted to various hospitals. However, on Wednesday evening, another unidentified patient breathed his last at the JPMC.
Mr Siddiqui said: “It has been established that it was a suicide attack and we are trying to ascertain the identity of the suicide bomber”.
However, DIG Investigation Zone-I Manzoor Mughal contested the claim of the city police chief and said: “It has not been established so far that it was a suicide attack.”
Mr Mughal said that most the bodies were identified. A head was found from the spot, which had been shifted to the mortuary for identification.
High-ranking police officials and other law enforcement personnel inspected the scene of the explosion after midnight when the law and order situation was brought under control.
Police sources said that the evidence collected from the spot showed that it was the suicide attack. They said that the bomb weighed between five to 15 kilograms with improvised explosive. The sources said that the ball bearings were used in the bomb making as the ball bearings were found from the bodies of those died in the blast.
Police sources close to investigators said that a suspect, Mohammad Hussain, was included in the investigations for his alleged involvement in the blast.
A resident of Golimar, Hussain hailed from Baltistan, in Northern Areas, and was one of those injured in the blast.
To a question that the new leadership of the Sunni Tehrik wanted to get an FIR registered against the Sindh government, the city police chief said that no one had turned up to lodge a case so far.
About army deployment at the funeral of three main leaders of the Sunni Tehrik on Thursday, he said: “No decision of army’s deployment in the city has so far been taken. However, army is alert and on standby”.
