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KARACHI, May 31: Death toll in Monday’s suicide bombing and subsequent violence in the city rose to 11 after six bodies were recovered from a fast food restaurant on Tuesday morning by fire-brigade personnel. The KFC restaurant had been torched by some people after the incident in the adjoining Madinat-ul-Ilm mosque and imambargah near the NIPA intersection in Gulshan-i-Iqbal. Five people, including the suicide bomber, were killed in the explosion that ripped through the mosque. Soon after the blast, a mob set the nearby public and private property including the restaurant on fire.
According to a press release issued by the KFC, the six deceased were its employees, all of them in their twenties. Three of them had joined the restaurant recently, and the other three had been serving the fast food chain for some time.
It said: “A few minutes after the blast in imambargah, a mob was at our doorstep. As an automatic response, we closed our ground floor shutters to ensure the safety of our customers, expecting that the mob would disperse. Ground floor shutters were broken and gasoline sprayed on the floor and furniture torched. Our crew tried to ensure that the customers were evacuated through the rooftop and other possible means. The six crew members were at the forefront of this and for their effort lost their lives.”
The CEO of the KFC franchise, Mr Rafiq Rangoonwala, said the government had not contacted the management. “The victims were part of our team and just like family members. Our shareholders and we are shocked by the incident. Our priority is how to compensate the families of the victims and what we can do for them,” he added.
Police identified the deceased as air-conditioner technician Mohammad Saleem, waiter Faraz Ahmed, sweeper John Peter, security guard Ghulam Hasan, technician in-charge Ilyas and accountant Asif. The bodies of Saleem, Faraz, Peter, and Hasan found on the stairs and on the first floor, while those of Asif and Ilyas, found in the restaurant’s cold storage, were frozen.
The families of Asif and Ilyas had informed police that they had not reached home. Police asked the fire-brigade to search the place which led to the recovery of the bodies which were later handed over to their families.
INVESTIGATION: Police on Tuesday identified two accomplices of the suicide bomber, who had blown himself up in the mosque.
Police said that the identity of the suicide bomber had not been established so far. However, the two attackers were identified as Asif Sarfaraz and Tehseen alias Fahad alias Qasim alias Naseem. Asif, a resident of Mehran Colony, Orangi Town, was killed and Tehseen, a resident of Shah Waliullah Colony, Sector 11-1/2, Orangi Town, was wounded during a shootout with police and the security guard in the mosque. During the exchange of fire, the suicide bomber succeeded in entering the mosque and he blew himself up in the veranda as he failed to enter the main prayer hall.
Police said that Tehseen had regained consciousness after he was shifted from the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre to the PNS Shifa hospital. They said that Tehseen had earlier misguided the police and introduced himself as Jamil Ahmed. However, police identified him as Tehseen, the right-hand man of on absconding militant suspect, Asif Chhotu of the banned Lashkar-i-Jhangvi group.
According to investigating officers Tehseen confessed that he belonged to Asif Chhotu group. He knew his accomplice as Asif Sarfaraz but did not know the name of the suicide bomber.
Raja Umar Khattab, DSP CID, who is part of the investigation team, told Dawn that Asif Chhotu had persuaded the suicide bomber to came to Karachi from Punjab. The bomber reached the city only two days before the incident. Asif Chhotu, the ringleader of the group, had rented a house in a Shantytown in Gulshan-i-Iqbal some three weeks back soon after coming here from Punjab.
Mr Khattab said that during investigation, the mastermind of the explosions in Karachi’s Hyderi mosque and Ali Raza imambargah on May 7, and May 31, last year, Gul Hasan, had told police that the group had started monitoring the Madinat-ul-Ilm mosque about a year ago. Since security at the mosque was intensified, Tehseen started another monitoring two days before the blast.
The DSP said that Tehseen had been affiliated with the banned organization for seven years. He was also involved in the Suparco case in which six employees were killed in Mauripur in October 2003.
