By Afshan S. Khan
The wreaths and bouquets placed for the martyrs of GHQ attack have not yet dried up completely, when only a kilometre away another suicide blast in the same vicinity of the cantonment ripped through the city claiming at least 34 lives and injuries to many.
These were the innocent people who were lined up outside the bank to collect their salaries and pension. Some had acquired token to collect their salary and some had already collected their salary but could not live a day to spend it with their children.
The fateful location of National Bank Limited is surrounded by Hotel Shalimar, Pearl Continental Hotel, De Mall Hotel and State Bank of Pakistan and GHQ only a kilometre away.The schools in the vicinity that had opened after almost two weeks were immediately closed down after the blast and the parents picked their children from the school in a complete panic. Immediately after the blast the main Mall Road was blocked and the traffic was diverted to the adjoining roads.
Hameeda Begum, a mother who had come to pick her children from the school, said that earlier it were the military installations and government owned buildings but now the terrorists have changed their strategy, targeting only innocent people just like in Peshawar where they had targeted women and children in Meena Bazaar.
Another parent Zubair Khan, while talking to ‘The News’, said that it has really become difficult for them to drop their children to school in such a tense situation. “The army should speed up the operation ‘Rah-e Nijat’ so that we can live in our city peacefully.
The residents of Rawalpindi and Islamabad have become so terrorised because of these incidents that they rarely go out for socialising and shopping,” he said. A teenager, Shahzeb, said that the only place they are allowed to go is their school and now that too has been jeopardised because of the uncertain situation.