KARACHI: While no breakthrough has been made in investigations in the Wednesday attack on Rangers personnel, a senior investigator said on Thursday he suspected that the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi was involved in it.

Four personnel of the paramilitary force were killed and three others wounded when their vehicle was hit by an improvised explosive device (IED) planted close to the gate of the 43 wing of Rangers offices.

“We have reason to believe that the Naeem Bukhari faction of the LJ could be behind the latest attack on Rangers since the accused has a history of animosity with the paramilitary force,” said SSP Farooq Awan, who heads the Special Investigation Unit.

For the first and last time, it was the paramilitary force which had picked up Naeem Bukhari in the 2000s. A court had set him free for want of evidence.

Bukhari and his group are widely believed to be behind a string of attacks against the Rangers carried out in the city last year, SSP Awan told Dawn.

The investigations so far carried out suggested that the IED was detonated through a mobile phone, and the same type of nuts and bolts had been used in the IED as in the previous attacks, he said.

In the past police had found some unexploded IEDs concealed in cement blocks that had the same composition of nuts and bolts laced with explosives, the officer said.

The soldiers who were killed in the Wednesday blast were identified as Havaldar Amanat Ali and Sepoys Irfan Jamil, Saifullah and Majid Ali.

After the funeral prayers on Thursday, their bodies were sent to their hometowns.

The police on Thursday registered an FIR on a complaint of Rangers Sepoy Khaqan Khan.