Terror wave engulfs Pindi, Lahore

SHAHID RAO/JAM SAJJAD HUSSAIN
RAWALPINDI/LAHORE – A suicide bomber exploded his explosive jacket in the parking area of Shalimar Hotel in front of National Bank of Pakistan here at Mall Road on Monday at 10:40am and killed at least 35 persons including two women, besides injuring 63 others.
Most of the victims were queuing up in front of the bank to draw their salaries at the time of blast. The explosion showered the area with human flesh, blood and shattering windows.
Soon after the blast, law enforcement agencies cordoned off the area and shifted the injured and the dead to various hospitals with the help of rescue teams. All the roads leading to the blast site were blocked and traffic from Mall Road was diverted to other roads.
Talking to media persons, Regional Police Officer (RPO) Muhammad Asalm Tareen confirmed that it was a suicide attack. He said it was too early to say anything about the target of the attacker.Another police official informed that security personnel had recovered the head of the suicide
bomber from the second floor of the building.
On the other hand, Rescue 1122 officials confirmed that the rescue workers shifted 34 dead bodies and 63 injured persons to various hospitals including District Headquarters Hospitals, Military Hospital and Combined Military Hospital.
The intensity of the blast was so severe that all the vehicles parked nearby were damaged completely. “The intensity of the blast knocked me down and I went into a state of unconsciousness for some time. When I regained my senses, I saw clouds of dust and blood everywhere in the restaurant while a leg of a deceased was lying in front of me,” told Rehan Ahmed, an eyewitness of the blast.
Later, District Emergency Officer of Rescue 1122 issued the names of the victims of the blast. The deceased which were brought at Combined Military Hospital included M. Sarwar, Khalid, Shahzad, Mehboob, Naimat, Hafeez, Jahangir, Munir Ahmed, Zain-ul-Haq, Kamran, Fakhur-un-Nisa, Sameena
Yaqoob and M. Yaqoob, while the identity of five bodies could not be ascertained.
The dead shifted to DHQ included M. Afzal, Sharafat Ali, M. Akbar, Tariq Javed Kayani, M. Arshad, M. Sarfraz and Bashir Ahmed, while four remained unknown. The deceased who were shifted to MH were Maqsood Ahmed, Shahid Abbas, Hamid Ali, Paris Khan, M Ahmed and Amjad Rizwan.
The names of eight injured brought to District Headquarters Hospital are: Imran, Mushtaq, Hikamatullah, M. Ijaz, Noor, Rafeeq, Sabtain and Bashir Ahmed. The 25 injured brought to Combined Military Hospital are Sajid Mehmood, Babar Khan, Saeed Zaman, M. Sher, Ghazanfar, M. Akram, Alam Khan, Khadim Hussain, Mukhtar Hussain, Mahad Ali, Shabbir Hussain, Rashid
Masood, M. Saleem, Sikander, Aetibar Shah, M. Aslam, Naimatullah, Islamuddin, Wahid, Faiz Qadir, Khawar Shehzad, M. Sadiq, M. Iqbal, Shakeel and M. Sabtain.
Likewise the names of 28 injured who were brought to Military Hospital were M. Akram, Mazhar, Noor Zaman, M. Shafique, M. Shahadat, Manzoor, Abdul Rehman, Khalid, Ramzan, Hayatullah, Nazir Ahmed, M. Imran, Munsib, Amjad, Zahid Iqbal, M. Saleem, M. Afzal, Lal Khan, Shakir Ali, M.
Shareef, Fakar Ullah Bhatti, M. Taufail, Basharat, Abdul Saeed, Sagheer Ahmed, M. Haroon and Ghafoor, while the name of one injured person was not ascertained. Similarly, M. Razzak and M. Nawaz were hospitalised at Heart International Hospital.
Agencies add: The second large-scale bomb to kill civilians in less than a week, the attack near the Army headquarters in the garrison city of Rawalpindi showed the enormity of the threat that Al-Qaeda-linked militants pose in Pakistan.
The explosion outside a building housing a bank and the four-star Shalimar Hotel rocked the area. “Our building shook as if in an earthquake and when we came out there was smoke everywhere and body parts were thrown into our office,” Raja Sher Ali, a marketing manager in a local company, told
AFP.
A surge in bloodshed left more than 300 people dead last month as Pakistan presses a major offensive against the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in the tribal belt.