KARACHI, April 9: A hand-grenade attack in the Lyari area left three sanitary workers injured and caused panic in the locality on Saturday, officials said. They said that the attack was quite similar to the one that had taken place outside the Rainbow Centre in Saddar only two days back.

The early morning incident did not cause any major loss or damage to the property.

Investigators suspected that the “back-to-back” grenade attacks mainly in the south zone of the police organisational structure were actually an attempt to 'convey a message and cause scare'.

“It was between 8.30am and 9am when two men on a motorbike emerged on the main road on which is located the Lyari town municipal administration office and sped away after one of the riders threw a hand-grenade from the moving bike,” said Napier SHO Inspector Nawaz Gondal.

He said some half-a-dozen sanitary workers were busy in their routine work and three of them sustained injuries due to the explosion.

“All the three injured were shifted to the Civil Hospital Karachi for treatment, where their condition was said to be stable. Similarly, there was no serious damage to any other structure,” the area SHO added.

Prior to the fresh incident, on Thursday night unidentified motorcyclists had thrown a hand-grenade near the Rainbow Centre in Saddar that left an intelligence officer dead and 21 others wounded.

In the Saddar attack the victims were mostly workmen and roadside vendors who were wrapping up their business at the time of the attack.

“There are facts which are very similar to each other,” said South Zone DIG Iqbal Mahmood. “Such facts needed to be checked to determine the exact motive and people behind the two acts. Even the hand-grenades used in the two separate attacks were similar in their make and origin.”

The Napier police later registered a case (FIR 19/2011) against unidentified persons under Sections 324 (attempted murder) and 34 (common intentions) of the Pakistan Penal Code while Sections 3/4 of the Explosive Substance Act and 7/8 of the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997 were also incorporated.