KOHAT, March 30: Petrol bombs were thrown into a cable operator’s office on the Rawalpindi road and a CD shop opposite the Kohat airbase was destroyed by an explosion, officials and witnesses said on Friday.
In the Bahawalnagar locality, armed men lobbed the petrol bombs into the cable operator’s office on Thursday. It caused fire which destroyed the equipment.
The owner, Kamran, told police that the armed men had asked him to get out of the office and then hurled the bombs into the office and destroyed the machinery.
The CD shop was destroyed when a time device went off at around 6am on Friday. Police rushed to the site and cordoned off the area. The Saddar police registered a case.
Police said CD shop owners and cable operators were receiving threats from extremists to close their businesses.
Meanwhile, police in an attempt to control the situation filled all posts of station house officers in Kohat on Friday, it was learnt.Officials said pro-Taliban groups had for the first time targeted these businesses in Kohat.
In the past, the airbase, from where 156 Al Qaeda operatives are said to have been taken to the Guantanamo Bay prison, had come under rocket attacks several times. Kohat is the headquarters of the IXth division of the Pakistan Army and the official residence of the field commander of Waziristan Operations.
