SUKKUR: Seventeen people, including women and children, were injured when a bomb blast blew up three bogies of the Peshawar-bound Khushhal Khan Khattak Express coming from Karachi and derailed another two at Noor Wah locality in Jacobabad on Thursday.
Officials at the Dil Murad police station said that according to the initial investigation, the bomb was planted on the track and detonated with a remote-controlled device.
Soon after the blast, people present near the scene and residents of the nearby villages rushed to the rescue of the screaming train passengers. They were taken to the Jacobabad Civil Hospital, where a state of emergency was declared. However, doctors at the hospital said none of the victims had sustained life-threatening injuries.
All other passengers were transported to the Jacobabad railway station to help them resume their onward journey.
Jacobabad Deputy Commissioner Raja Shahzaman Khuhro SSP Malik Zafar Iqbal, Railways SSP and a number of political and social activists visited the site.
SSP Awan told the media that the remote control device believed to used in detonating the bomb was found at a distance from the blast site. He was of the view that Baloch nationalists might have been involved in carrying out the blast.
A bomb disposal squad official, Inspector Badaruddin Shaikh, said after examining the site that the bomb weighing seven-eight kilograms was planted on a track and was detonated with a remote-controlled device when the train reached the booby trap.
Some passengers of the train told journalists that the explosion was deafening and so intense that several people fell unconscious. The blast also created a wide and deep crater at the site, they said, adding that the train was moving at a very slow speed when the blast occurred.
The post-blast scene suggested that the blast blew three bogies up into the air before they fell down on two other tracks several feet away. The impact of the blast caused damage to some other bogies two of which derailed. Parts of the bogies scattered in a radius of about 100 metres.
Rail traffic on this sector remained suspended for many hours. However, the track repair work was carried out at speedily after removal of the affected bogies in the evening.
Larkana Commissioner Saeed Ahmed Mangnejo and DIG Dr Sain Rakhio Mirani also visited the site and collected information from various officials about the incident. The commissioner directed the relevant officials to ensure restoration of rail traffic on the sector within the next 24 hours.
DIG Mirani told the media that the bombing might be the reaction to the ongoing action by law-enforcement agencies against nationalists in Baluchistan.
An FIR (No.6/2015) against unknown criminals was registered on the complaint of a senior railways official at the Dil Murad police station.
It was the third incident of bomb attack targeting the Khushhal Khan Khatak Express on this railways sector over the past few months. It occurred only a day after a bogie of the stationary Sukkur Express caught fire and gutted at the Jacobabad station in what police described as an act of subversion.
Published in Dawn, February 13th, 2015
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