PESHAWAR, July 18: A bomb hoax on Wednesday created panic in the vicinity of a family planning clinic located in a posh locality. Bomb disposal squad and police teams were called in to defuse an explosive device found outside the Sabz Sitara clinic in Defence Residential Colony at about 11:30am. The bomb disposal squad soon found out that the device was fake, which was assembled using some ball-bearings and wires placed inside a plastic bottle. A hand-written letter in Urdu was also found pinned to the fake bomb warning the staff of the clinic to shut down their ‘un-Islamic business’ within a week otherwise a real bomb would be planted outside the clinic.

“(Consider) this to be your last warning. (For now) we are just placing a replica of a bomb outside your clinic. Next time it will be a real bomb, capable of destroying the whole building. Wind up your programme within a week,” the letter that was apparently composed by someone with a weak command of the Urdu language. On top of the letter were two words written prominently, ‘Al Jehad and Al Shahadat’, while Jehadul Islami written on its bottom.

“You are trying to eliminate our race through family planning at the behest of the US and Israel,” it further said. At the end, unidentified persons also warned that people supporting President Pervez Musharraf would have to face a backlash like the one occurring in Swat and Miramshah.

Nayyar Syed of the Clinic said that they had received an anonymous call yesterday. “The caller had warned us to wind up our business. He had dubbed us US puppets,” he said. He had made it clear that if they continued what he termed efforts to decrease the Muslim population, they would have to face dire consequences.