KARACHI: Police on Friday made little headway in a probe into Thursday’s deadly bomb attack on SSP Farooq Awan’s convoy as the footage retrieved from the CCTV cameras installed along the road shows an unidentifiable silhouette of a man parking the explosives-laden vehicle by the roadside minutes before the explosives were detonated by remote control.

The investigation team headed by city police chief Ghulam Qadir Thebo believed the Suzuki pickup used in the attack carried more than 50 kilos of explosive material but it was surprising to see how easily the suspected terrorist brought it to the designated place in the DHA.

“The footage of the CCTV cameras installed close to the blast site shows an unidentifiable silhouette of a man coming out of the vehicle after having parked it by the roadside near the intersection and walking away,” said Mr Thebo.

“A few minutes later, SSP Awan’s convoy appeared there only to be hit by the powerful blast. SSP Awan was driving himself and the blast mostly damaged his armoured vehicle’s left side which probably helped him escape unhurt,” he said.

He said that police had proposed to the Sindh government to announce a Rs2 million reward to those willing to offer any assistance in tracing and identifying the handler and the mastermind of the attack. A forensic investigation of the evidence collected at the blast site was also under way, he added.

Though a number of news channels pointed the finger at the banned Jundullah and held it responsible for the attack, the investigators were not ready to name it so soon before completing their inquiries.

However, they did not rule out the possibility of the Jundullah’s involvement saying initial findings and evidence collected so far offered enough material to cast suspicion on the militant outfit with a history of carrying out brazen attacks and none of them were suicidal.

“The modus operandi of the attack clearly points to Jundullah’s involvement,” said Raja Umer Khattab, chief of the CID police counter-terror unit.

“If one reviews their history, one can easily call the Thursday attack to be Jundullah’s job as their men have the expertise to handle such a huge quantity of explosives in an IED (improvised explosive device),” he said.

He referred to the 2009 bomb attacks on an Ashura procession and the one on the participants in the Chehlum congregation in 2010. It did not end there, he said, as six armed men got four Ashura blast suspects freed from police custody by attacking the security personnel with hand grenades in the city courts in June 2010, killing a constable and an undertrial prisoner.

“It seems that Jundullah, which had not been active for the past year, has resumed its activities. The militant organisation is in its fourth phase of militancy. It was set up in 2003 and came under the spotlight when it executed the attack on the Karachi corps commander in 2004,” said Mr Khattab.

“Then it changed its targets and focused on bank robberies in Karachi to generate funds, setting a record in the number of bank heists in a year. The attack on SSP Awan indicates the group is reorganising itself in Karachi and it must have set new targets for its renewed phase,” he said.

Published in Dawn, September 27th, 2014