PESHAWAR: A cop was killed and 20 persons wounded when militants targeted the police vehicles carrying high-profile prisoners with an improvised explosive device (IED) in Gulbahar on the Grand Trunk Road here Saturday.
The prisoners were being shifted to Mardan from Peshawar Central Prison in connection with the hearing of cases in the court.
“A constable, Shah Hussain, was killed and 20 persons injured when the escort vehicle of the prisoners’ van was hit with the explosives as soon as it reached the Gulbahar Chowk,” the in-charge of Gulbahar Police Station, Syed Atiq Shah, told The News.
He said the wounded were rushed to the Lady Reading Hospital (LRH) after the security officials cordoned off the area. Two vehicles and three auto-rickshaws were also damaged in the blast.
The injured also included a woman and six policemen, all from Mardan Police who had come to take the prisoners from the Peshawar Central Prison to a court for hearing. It was the second attack on police vehicles in Peshawar in two days.
The spokesman for the LRH, Jamil Shah, said that 20 persons including six policemen had been brought to the hospital. He said five of them were in a critical condition.
The cops wounded in the blast included Manzoor Ahmad, Syed Kalam, Nauman Khan, Abdul Jabbar and Shah Hassan. The civilians injured in the blast were identified as Tahira, Rahim Gul, Sher Bahadur, Raz Mohammad, Nasrullah, Mohammad Nisar, Mohammad Ishaq, Iftikhar, Mirza Khan, Fazal Haq, Farhad, Daud, Behram and Abdullah.
The explosives were concealed in a box which was kept near the under-construction overhead bridge for which the GT Road has been divided and only a portion is being used for the traffic.