Not enough cops deployed at shrine, concedes CM

Murad says religiously-motivated terrorists present in Sindh,
particularly in districts bordering with other provinces

The Sindh chief minister conceded on Monday that the number of cops deployed at the shrine of Sufi saint Lal Shahbaz Qalandar at the time of the bomb blast there last month was insufficient.

A terrorist attack had already been carried out at Shah Noorani [a shrine in Khuzdar, Balochistan] and we should have been more prepared,” Murad Ali Shah said during the new session of the provincial assembly while delivering his policy statement about the February 16 shrine bomb blast.

“Someone took along a police vehicle from Sehwan meant for VVIP security but that person was not a politician,” the chief minister said without giving further details.

Shah said his government had prepared a policy for providing security to shrines as terrorists were attempting to attack them.

He said Karachi faced a terrorist attack threat. “Even today we caught a huge cache of weapons and ammunition after one terrorist was killed in a shootout with police and other people were caught,” he added.

 

Religiously-motivated terrorists

He said there were religiously-motivated terrorists present in Sindh and their activities were particularly detected in the districts bordering with other provinces especially in Kashmore, Jacobabad and Ghotki.

“We, along with Balochistan government, are monitoring the border areas of the two provinces,” he added.

He said his government had indentified certain religious organisations having ties with terrorists. “We have asked the federal government to place these terrorist organisations on the watch list.”

The chief minister said the Sindh government had the resolve to continue the fight against terrorism.

“We have to collectively fight against terrorists to eliminate them. We politicians do have a number of issues to quarrel over but we have to be united against terrorism. This war against terrorism is a national cause.”

About the shrine blast, Shah said the suicide bomber would be identified and his facilitators too would be tracked down.

He added that the suicide bomber did not belong to Sindh.

“The footage of the Sehwan Sharif shrine attack is in black-and-white as there was a power outage there at the time and CCTV cameras there were operating on generators. “But even with this footage, we will be able to identify the suicide bomber.”

Power issue

The chief minister said electricity supply to the Lal Shahbaz Qalandar shrine had been disconnected despite the payment of its power bill. 

He added that power outages occurred at the shrine daily from 6pm to 8pm at the time of the dhamaal.

During the previous tenure of the Pakistan People’s Party’s federal government, Raja Pervaiz Ashraf (the then water and power minister) had provided a dedicated power line for the shrine and there were no power outages there. “This line was later removed under the pretext that electricity was being stolen from it,” Shah added.

He said the entire dedicated line had been disconnected to stop the electricity theft.

 

Stats of the attack

The chief minister told the lawmakers that 81 people were killed and 383 injured in the Sehwan Sharif bomb blast.

The people who died included 46 men, 10 women, and 25 children less than the age of 15. 

Seventy-eight of the people killed had been identified. Two bodies were still at the Edhi morgue.

He said of the 383 injured people, only 10 were still being treated at hospitals while the rest of them had been discharged.

 

Emergency arrangements

The chief minister said the terrorist attack had affected 500 people - obvious from the fact that there were not 500 ambulances present in Sehwan Sharif at that time.

He said that taluka hospital of the area was open and people used their own vehicles to transport the people injured in the attack to the hospital.

He said the medical superintendent of the Sehwan Hospital had carried out an excellent service. People had queued in Sehwan to donate blood for the injured people.  “I salute people of Sehwan,” he added.

“We provided rescue services as well as we could within the available resources.”

He said ambulances reached hospitals within a few minutes of the Sehwan blast.

“When I reached there at 30 minutes past midnight, there were 25 ambulances at the Sehwan Hospital while 40 injured people were being treated there,” he added. 

The Sehwan Hospital could not perform major operations and seriously injured people were sent to hospitals in Nawabshah, Jamshoro, and Dadu.

Shah said ambulances and doctors reached Sehwan from other cities and districts. The Nawabshah deputy commissioner reached there along with ambulances and doctors. “I was contacted by the army and naval chiefs and they helped us a lot,” he added.

He said he himself had used a helicopter of the Pakistan Navy to fly Sehwan.

The chief minister said the Sehwan Sharif blast was not just an attack on Sindh but on the entire humanity. “. We resumed dhamaal there the very next day and reopened the shrine in just three days,” he added.

He said not just Muslims, but non-Muslims too were killed in the Sehwan tragedy.

The chief minister said he was saddened to see that certain people had criticised his government at the time of the tragedy instead of extending their support to it.