KARACHI: After a brief hiatus, armed gangsters re-emerged in the violence-prone Lyari area and carried out gun-and-bomb attacks on the local offices of the Pakistan Peoples Party within 24 hours in what police on Friday described as an attempt to cause fear and panic among residents ahead of local government elections.

The police said that the first attack was carried out late on Thursday night in the Phool Patti Lane locality, where armed motorcyclists fired at the election offices of the PPP candidates on Ahmed Shah Bukhari Road. However, no one was hurt in the attack.

At around noon on Friday, two men riding a motorcycle threw a hand-grenade on a filter plant on Shah Waliullah Road in the Nayabad locality and rode away. Seven persons, who had come there to fetch water, sustained minor injuries due to the explosion.

The police said that the filter plant was run by a local PPP leader, Aslam Samoo, who also used the place as a party office.

SSP-City Fida Hussain told Dawn that gangsters belonging to the Baba Ladla and Uzair Baloch gangs started gun-and-grenade attacks in Lyari to create fear and harass people ahead of the local government elections so that political activists could not be elected.

He claimed that the law-enforcers also ensured that the gangster would not contest the LG polls. “Therefore, now, the gangsters have started these tactics just to harass the voters.”

An official of the Bomb Disposal Squad, Ghulam Mustafa, told Dawn that it was a miracle that no one got killed in the explosion, adding that the grenade had landed in the mud.

He said it was a Russian-made grenade, which hit a damaged portion of the filter plant and the mud absorbed its impact. Otherwise such types of grenade attacks might have taken several lives, he added.

Mr Samoo said that party workers and supporters were the target of the grenade attack.

He said certain elements in Lyari were against the political activities of the PPP and the attack was aimed at restricting the party’s election campaign.

Area residents said that gangsters also tore up banners and pamphlets of several PPP candidates for the LG polls in Ali Mohammed Mohalla, Slaughter House, Kumela Stop, Edu Lane, etc.

Meanwhile, Baghdadi SHO Nisar Ahmed Lodhi said that a case against unknown persons was registered on the complaint of one of the injured under Sections 324 (attempted murder) and 34 (common intention) of the Pakistan Penal Code read with Sections 3/4 of the Explosive Substance Act and 7 of the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1997.

He said that no FIR was lodged in connection with the firing in the Phool Pati Lane area, as PPP activists asked the police to wait until they collected information about the attackers so that they could nominate them in the FIR. However, they had not approached the police so far, the area SHO added.

Published in Dawn, November 14th, 2015

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