SARGODHA: Two young suspected suicide attackers were killed in an explosion near a bridge in Sargodha on Saturday.

According to a witness, a car pulled up beside the bridge at 11am. After a few minutes, two bearded youths stepped off the car and took out chairs from a shop on the University Road to sit on a footpath. After an exchange of hot words, one of them pounced upon the other, setting off a suicide jacket which killed both of them. Six pedestrians were injured.

Rescue teams and bomb disposal squad (BDS) claimed to have retrieved the suicide jacket from the scene.

A suspect was caught by shopkeepers and handed over to the police.

The bridge lies on the main road from Sargodha to an army depot while a number of important government offices are in its vicinity.

Police took the bodies to a mortuary. One of the dead was identified as Ghulam Mustafa, a resident of Sargodha’s Istaqlalabad Colony.

A police team launched an investigation under the supervision of DPO Sajjad Manj and arrested four suspects, the owner of the car among them.

Police initially dismissed the explosion as a gas cylinder blast, but the bomb disposal squad determined that it was a suicide bomb.

Published in Dawn, June 7th, 2015

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