KARACHI, July 27: A federal bomb disposal expert, who voluntarily appeared before the Nishtar Park blast inquiry tribunal on Thursday, hinted at the possibility of two suicide bombers.

An ex-army major of the engineering corps, Tabassam Khurshid said he works as director of the Islamabad police bomb disposal squad and was asked by the interior secretary, Syed Kamal Shah, to probe the April 11 explosion.

He arrived in Karachi on April 14, prepared a report after examining two bodies and a skull in addition to the severed head of the suspected suicide bomber in the Edhi mortuary, interviewing the injured victims in the Civil Hospital and inspecting the site. The report was sent to the interior secretary on April 23.

Asked under what authority of law he conducted the probe, the ex-major said he carried out the interior secretary’s order. He said he was not asked by the provincial government or police to hold an inquiry nor submitted his report to them.

Having learnt through the media that the tribunal wants anybody with any information about the blast to appear before it, he decided to present a copy of his report to it. Described as a ‘surprise witness’ by Additional Advocate-General Sarwar Khan, the bomb disposal expert gave highly technical details about the explosion and the device it might have been caused by but left the tribunal little wiser about the incident as he failed to give definite replies to its queries.

The witness replied in the negative when asked by the tribunal whether he himself was a chemical examiner or sent the material examined by him for chemical analysis.

He said he had attended a large number of bomb disposal courses, including one on post-blast investigation, and has probed over 50 blasts.

Maj Khurshid said he found no mark of the blast on the ground or the stage where most of the casualties occurred. The fact that the explosion blew no hole nor created a fissure on the ground indicated that it was caused by a suicide bomber and not by a planted bomb.

No cracks appear even the blast occurs one foot above the ground level. In his opinion, he said, the blast occurred four feet above the ground level. Asked why the pipes the stage was erected on remained intact, he said they might not have been hit by the material released by the blast.

Five kilograms of highly explosive material wrapped around the suicide bomber’s body as a ‘jacket’ or ‘waistcoat’ with pellets or projectiles made of stainless steel should have been used to cause the explosion, the witness said. The chemical used was C4. The velocity or VOD of the explosion would have been 26,400 feet per second and it must have released gas at a speed of 1000 kilometers per hour. The blast was big enough to damage anybody or anything within a radius of 50 meters. It generated 1000 degrees of heat. Asked by Sunni Movement counsel Javaid Ahmed Chhatari why most casualties occurred on the stage, he said those standing nearest to the suicide bomber were likely to be hurt the most. He could not reply to a query why an equal impact was not created within 50-meter radius. Advocate Chhatari also said that if the radius were that wide, the entire park should have been hit and casualties should have been in thousands. Why the impact was concentrated on the stage? the lawyer asked.

The witness said that the statements of the injured victims were too divergent and confusing that he could not specify the spot where the blast originated from. He believed that the bomber might have been standing some 20 feet from the stage in its front. The severed head might not have belonged to the bomber because a victim standing some feet away might also have his body torn into pieces. The AAG surmised that the head might have been thrown away by the impact.

Earlier, three more medico-legal officers of the Jinnah Post-Graduate Medical Centre, the Civil Hospital and the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital recorded their statements. The tribunal continued its proceedings till 5 pm on Thursday to examine Maj Tabassam Khurshid.