GUJRANWALA, Feb 9: Three low-intensity bomb blasts targeting police stations and a rest house within a radius of one kilometre created panic in the city on Wednesday. No casualty was reported in any of the incidents.

As office-goers and students were preparing to leave for their respective destinations, a planted bomb exploded outside the CIA staff police building in People's Colony at 7:15am. The blast smashed windowpanes of the building.

Hardly two minutes later, a blast shook the offices of DIG, the city traffic officer and the special branch. A wall of the DIG Office collapsed and several vehicles parked around the buildings were partially damaged.

Teams of Rescue-1122 and Bomb Disposal Squad, together with senior police officers, inspected the site and recovered two bombs outside the CIA staff police building, each weighing 8kgs.

Around quarter past ten another explosion created panic as it damaged the roof of a police rest house. The police later arrested more than 50 suspects, many of them labourers working at an under-construction building.

City Police Officer Ghulam Mahmood Dogar told journalists that all the bombs were packed in plastic containers and meant to target the law enforcers. He said the explosive material had been sent to a laboratory in Lahore.

Meanwhile, leaders of political parties and trade organisations besides the civil society condemned the blasts. Speaking to newsmen, PML-N's Ghulam Dastagir Khan, PML-Q's Chaudhry Zafarullah Cheema, Jamaat-i-Islami's Dr Obaidullah Gohar, PPP District President Abdullah Virk, Gujranwala Chamber of Commerce and Industry President Sheikh Sarwat Ikram and Sunni Ittehad Council's Maulana Akbar Nakshbandi urged the government to address the root-cause of terrorism.

They demanded that the district administration and the police provide security to people.