KARACHI, Nov 26: A labourer died and three others, including an owner of a concrete blocks plant, were wounded when an improvised explosive device (IED) went off in Mohabbat Nagar, Malir on Monday morning.

The IED, concealed in a concrete block, was exploded by remote control near the Jaffer-i-Tayyar Society within the remit of the Malir City police station, officials said.

They added that a 65-year-old labourer, Saleh Mohammad, died on the spot.

Allah Warayo, Haji Ghulam Hussain and the plant owner, Mohammad Anwar, were wounded in the explosion.

The deceased and the wounded were taken to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre.

The officials quoted hospital sources as saying that Allah Warayo was in a critical condition.

“It [the concrete block] was part of the stock but the target was definitely not the plant,” said SSP Special Investigation Unit (SIU) Farooq Awan. The IED, concealed in the concrete block, was detonated by a cellphone signal, he added.

The SSP said the device bore a striking similarity to the one exploded in the Orangi Town last week. Nuts and bolts of the same size were also used in the IEDs recently found in different parts of the city and those used in the twin Orangi blasts, he said.

“They [terrorists] have simply destroyed the IED as apparently they had failed to use it,” assumed CID Counter Terrorism Wing SSP Raja Umar Khattab.

The wounded were residents of Dawood Goth. They told the media that they had returned to work on Monday morning after three public holidays.

An official of the bomb disposal unit said that half a kilo of explosives laced with nuts, bolts and screws were used in the IED.

SIM card

A subscriber identification module (SIM) collected by the forensic division of the police from the Orangi blast site belonged to one of the blast victims, it emerged on Monday.

The police investigators had found a cellphone and the SIM card from the site of the first blast on Nov 21 in Orangi Town and handed over both to the digital forensic lab.

Experts analysed and retrieved all the contacts and deleted text messages from the SIM card in the lab recently commissioned in the Karachi office of forensic division.

During the course of investigation, the police found that the SIM card belonged to Mohammad Arshad, who had died in the blast, but it was not registered in his name, said an officer associated with the investigation.

The police said that Arshad was sitting at a tyre shop situated near an Imambargah at the time of the first blast. Mohammad Arsalan, owner of an oil depot, and Arshad had died in the blast.