PESHAWAR, July 18: In view of the last week’s attack on foreign tourists in Mansehra, the centre has asked the NWFP government to enhance foreigners’ security throughout the province, Dawn has learnt.

The federal interior ministry has asked the province to beef up security in collaboration with respective district governments during tourists’ visits to the province.

The ministry has also sought suggestions from the province for improving the law and order situation.

On July 13, an explosive device, probably a hand grenade, was lobbed over a group of foreign tourists at the site of Ashoka relics on Karakoram Highway near Mansehra. The group, mostly Germans, was on its way to China.

About 13 people, nine of them foreigners, were slight injured and, as a result, 100 people, most of them Afghan refugees, were arrested. The agencies, however, are still clueless about the real culprits.

In a five-page letter, a copy also addressed to the Inspector General of Police, the federal government has asked the NWFP government and all concerned agencies to take stringent measures to avert any such incident in future.

The province’s police chief Saeed Khan told Dawn that elaborate arrangements had been made throughout the province. He said: “The police force has always been vigilant, but the bus carrying the tourists was not supposed to stop at the Ashoka Rock,” he said.

“The investigation,” the police chief said, “was moving in the right direction and sufficient progress has been made.”