SUKKUR: Residents of a large area of Jacobabad city on Thursday rushed out of their houses, shops and other structures in panic after hearing the deafening sound of a blast that caused doors and windows to shake for a few moments.

The panic, however, subsided within an hour when they came to know that the ‘blast’ was caused by an F-16 plane breaking the sound barrier.

Offices of newspapers and private TV channels in the city received hundreds of calls soon after the blast as people wanted to know about the blast. Reports from various areas suggested that many people, fearing that something horrible might have happened, rushed to schools to bring their children back home.

An equal level of panic hit several police stations with personnel, already on alert, moved swiftly to locate the blast site.

Jacobabad SSP Sajid Hussain Khokhar told this correspondent that the situation got back to normal within an hour when the actual cause of the blast was made known to people through the media.

Published in Dawn, February 24th, 2017