JHANG, Oct 22: The Oct 18 blasts that targeted the PPP chairperson’s welcome rally in Karachi was neither a suicide bombing nor was it meant to kill Benazir Bhutto, claims Syeda Abida Husain.

A key PPP leader who is an eyewitness to the horrific event, Abida Husain told journalists from Jhang and Chiniot at her residence at Shah Jewna immediately after her return from Karachi that she could not board the container at the airport, but joined the rally an hour prior to the blast when she was summoned by the chairperson herself to be with her on her journey to the Mazar-i-Quaid.

She said she had a brief chat with the chairperson at her specially-built capsule inside the container after which she went atop the vessel to join the party leadership. “The party workers were chanting slogans and dancing; the atmosphere was simply electrifying when a blast, followed by another massive explosion of extremely severe intensity, shocked the merrymakers.

“The flame emitted from the exploded device was several hundred feet high and was like a towering inferno and the devastation it caused clearly showed that it was not a suicide bomb attack”.

The intensity of the blast, she said, suggested that the device used was not less than 100 pounds of weight as a suicide bomber couldn’t carry a jacket containing more than 10 to 15 pounds of explosives.

“It cannot be ruled out that the device was planted in a deep dug pit on the road on Oct 17 when the road was closed for the traffic and cordoned off at this point for several hours, and it was blown up by a remote control just before the arrival of Benazir Bhutto’s container,” said Abida, who also suffered minor injuries in the blast.

It also went to show that it was not the work of any militant group, but a conspiracy hatched and executed by those in the power at the central and provincial levels with the support of agencies subservient to them, she said.

The PPP leader further claimed that the aim of the blast was definitely not to kill Benazir Bhutto, but to scare her loyalists and keep them away from such receptions and rallies in the future. “It is certainly the government which is behind the incident which has carved out for itself an excuse to impose a countrywide ban on such rallies to prevent Benazir Bhutto from storming the interior Sindh and Punjab with rallies with even more turnout and eventually sweeping the polls.”

She said it was the most agonising experience of her life to see mutilated limbs hurling around; it was a nightmare she could never forget.