KARACHI: A 50-year-old woman was killed, and a minor girl and a woman were injured in an explosion due to a grenade by alleged gangsters in Lyari’s Baghdadi area on Friday afternoon, according to police.

They said that a hand grenade was lobbed on street three in Ali Mohammad Lane, which landed inside a home. As a result, two women and a minor girl sustained critical injuries and were transported to the Civil Hospital Karachi where doctors declared one of them as dead. The deceased was identified as Halima Sher Mohammad and the injured were three-year-old Fatima Rasheed and 45-year-old Khatoon Bibi who were admitted to the hospital for treatment.

“The incident appeared to be the outcome of infighting between members of two rival gangs in the area,” said Baghdadi SHO Haq Nawaz. He claimed that it was not a reaction to the arrest of Uzair Baloch, one of the ringleaders in Lyari, who was arrested by Interpol in Dubai, a few days ago. However, he added that the police suspected the involvement of a gang led by Uzair as the grenade was flung in a locality dominated by their rival gang led by Noor Mohammed alias Baba Ladla.

‘We still can’t see peace happening in Lyari’

Meanwhile, as little Fatima struggled for each breath in the emergency ward of the hospital, in a small house in Lyari’s Bhund Mohalla, preparations were under way to lay Halima to rest.

Having spent five fun-filled days in Karachi, Fatima was happy to be going home in Tando Allahyar. Her grandfather Rahim Bakhsh gave her a Rs50 note as she sat in her grand-aunt Khatoon Bibi’s lap on the footpath outside their main door basking in the winter sun. Then Rahim Bakhsh went inside to take a bath before going out again for Friday prayers. That’s when he heard the blast.

“It was sometime between 12:45pm and 1pm. I heard the blast and my sister screaming and came running outside to find our neighbour Halima’s lifeless body next to whom lay my little granddaughter covered in blood,” Rahim Bakhsh narrated as he turned his attention to an older woman crying softly on a stretcher nearby. “My sister [Khatoon Bibi] doesn’t know about Halima,” the elderly man gestured towards the woman on the stretcher with leg injuries. “The child was in her lap when it all happened,” he said.

“Where is Halima?” The woman asked the people around her as Rahim Bakhsh touched her shoulder reassuringly and smiled.

“She is herself paralysed from waist down,” he said while looking away and brushing off the tears running down his cheeks. “I would give my life for peace in Lyari but all these operations happen there all the time and we still can’t see peace happening,” he finally broke down.

A young man Ghulam Fareed, lending support to the man, and introducing himself as a social worker working with Shah Baig Educational and Welfare Society in the neighbourhood where the incident took place, said that Halima was a widow of around 40 years of age, and living there with her sick and bedridden mother.

“They are Sindhis and have been living in Lyari for years now. When her dead body reached her home, her mother fainted from the shock. She is still unconscious. She was completely dependent on her widowed daughter, who would herself borrow money from friends and neighbours to make ends meet. God knows who will take care of her now,” Fareed wondered aloud while sadly shaking his head and turning his gaze on the injured child.

“She has a very serious head injury. Doctors say she still has metal fragments in her skull. I just pray, she survives,” he said. “We haven’t yet informed her father, who works as a labourer in Dubai. But her mother is here waiting outside. She cannot bear to see her injured child so we are trying to calm her down,” he added.

“This is the month of Rabi-ul-Awwal. Dear God, please don’t take Fatima,” the injured child’s young mother sat muttering to herself outside as she rocked back and fourth.

“We were going back home to Tando Allahyar today. I had Fatima after many prayers. Both my husband and I wanted a daughter and we had three sons hoping for a daughter. She is our only daughter, our little princess,” the mother cried. “I was on the second floor when the blast happened. I wish it had injured me instead of my child and old aunt. My aunt says that it was a grenade hurled at them by a few men who quickly passed by on foot. You tell me, what kind of human beings attack women and children?”

Published in Dawn, January 3rd, 2015

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