KOHAT, Oct 4 Leads provided by some of the supposed targets of last month's suicide attack in the city have proved more confusing than helpful to the investigators, according to sources privy to the investigations.

They found it strange that the owners of a restaurant and shops in the Kacha Pakha market who had been receiving threats on sectarian grounds from an anonymous organization for six months escaped unscathed in the September 18 attack that killed 41 people and injured 70.

“It was an act of terrorism in which the plotters wanted to create an impression that their target was a specific sect but more than dozen people from other sect also perished in the blast. That complicates the case,” one of the investigators told Dawn on Sunday.

The owners of the restaurant, Qismat Ali, had received a number of letters by post and sometimes left even in the buildings during the last six months. But the local people ignored the threat because the language used in the unusually nameless leaflets was different than that of Taliban.

The style in which the suicide blast was carried out, targeting the markets, hotels and the passengers on the main Kohat-Hangu highway had created a lot of confusion about the intention of the mastermind.

The last letter written to Qismat Ali in the mid of Ramazan had warned him to close his hotel in the holy month. The dispatcher had alleged that those Muslims who did not fast used to eat in his restaurant which was a great sin in Sharia.

But the bomber did not rammed his Jeep into the hotel and instead blew it up on the main road in front of another building when Kacha Pakha Square was jam packed with people belonging to all sects.

It is interesting that there was no eyewitness left to describe the identity of the suicide bomber because people, buildings and vehicles within 100 metres range vanished in the explosion.

Investigators believe that the attack was planned in Orakzai Agency from where the explosives-laden jeep entered Kohat.

The areas in upper and lower Orakzai Agency served as the headquarters of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan controlled by Hakeemullah Mehsud group and Tariq Afridi group of Darra Adamkhel had claimed that they had more than 1,000 suicide bombers just waiting for orders to target any place in the country. —Correspondent