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| Eight cops among 15 killed in Islamabad suicide blast |
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Saturday, July 28, 2007
53 injured; bomber’s head recovered
Shakeel Anjum
ISLAMABAD: At least 15 people, including eight policemen, were killed and 53 others injured, when a suicide bomber struck a group of policemen in a restaurant following a clash between the Lal Masjid activists and the police after Friday prayers here.
The bomber blew himself up at the Muzaffargarh Nihari House and the Pakwan Centre, Aabpara —some 500 yards away from the Lal Masjid in a busy business centre in a thickly populated area of the capital — at about 5.20 pm.
Around 20 personnel of the Punjab police were sitting in and outside the restaurant at that time. The dead included eight Punjab police personnel with 16 others injured. The dead and injured were rushed to Polyclinic and PIMS Hospitals.
Security agencies recovered the head of the alleged bomber, sources said, adding, “His face is identifiable with the nose disfigured but can be reshaped by surgery”.
The bombing spot could not be cordoned off even two hours after the massacre while the faraway roads were tightly barricaded by the administration.
Inspector-General Police (IGP) Iftikhar Ahmad, DIG Shahid Nadeem Baloch, SSP Zafar Iqbal and officials of the sensitive agencies as well as the bomb disposal squads of the Army, the police and reached the scene and collected pieces of the suicide bomber and of the bomb for investigation.
Eyewitnesses said a young man in white clothes entered the triple storey restaurant and blew himself up among a group of policemen. The blast was so powerful that its bang was heard many kilometres away from the scene, while windowpanes of dozens of adjacent buildings were smashed and tens of cars damaged. Pieces of the suicide bomber’s body were scattered over an area of about 100 yards, witnesses said.
“I was standing at my stall across the road, some 20 yards away from the restaurant, when I saw blowing of everything at the hotel with hew and cry,” a vender running his newspaper stall near the scene said.
Raja Rahim, a shopkeeper close to the restaurant, said: “All of a sudden I witnessed a explosion with a big bang and saw pieces of human bodies flying in the air.” He added that a cloud of smoke engulfed the area and nothing could be seen even at 10 feet distance. “I saw mutilated bodies, human limbs and critically wounded people scattered on the ground and crying at the scene,” he said.
The dead were identified as constables Ammar Ali, 42, Wasim, 25, Natiq Zahoor, 25, Taqiul Hassan, 27, Rafaqat Hussain, Ahmad Hasnain Abdul Waqas, Amjad and another unidentified policeman.
Those among the dead civilians were identified as Tahir Ayub, resident of G-7, Masood Liaqat of Allama Iqbal Open University, Tanveer Ahmad and Muhammad Yaqoob. Body of yet another civilian remained unidentified.
Those critically injured among the 53 wounded were Umar Hayat, Ahmad Ali, Tasvir Khan, Zakir, Haroon and Kamran.
AFP adds: The attack came as pro-Taliban students occupied Lal Masjid during Friday prayers, sparking clashes with security forces. Policemen’s caps and shoes lay alongside body parts at the scene of the blast, an AFP correspondent said.
“It was a suicide bombing. We have found the remains of the attacker and we are carrying out DNA testing,” Interior ministry spokesman Brig (retd) Javed Cheema told AFP.
A senior security official speaking on condition of anonymity told AFP, “A man detonated explosives strapped to his body among two rows of the Punjab police constabulary members, who were there on duty because of the unrest at Lal Masjid.”
“I saw bodies flying through the air, some were without legs and some were without arms. I put as many as I could into ambulances,” policeman Mukhtar Ahmad said at the scene, outside a popular restaurant in the Aabpara market.
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ISSN 1563-9479 
