Seven, including woman, injured in Karachi cracker blast

KARACHI: As many as seven people, including a woman, were wounded in a cracker attack carried out by some unidentified assailants in the outskirts of the city on Tuesday night. The police said some unidentified men riding a motorcycle hurled a cracker on a Jashan-e-Azadi stall in the Gulshan-e-Hadeed area in the limits of Steel Town Police Station. The blast caused panic and fear in the locality. Meanwhile, a heavy contingent of law enforcers, including the Rangers and police, arrived at the blast site and cordoned off the entire area to collect evidence.The bomb disposal squad was also called to the spot.

The police said the blast resembled the series of attacks on law enforcement agencies, including the Rangers and police in the recent past in Karachi, suspecting the separatist group of Sindhi nationalists might be behind the attack.The injured were identified as 18-year-old Amir, son of Omar, 25-year old Danish, son of Niaz Ali, 32-year old Anusha, wife of Junaid, and 30-year old Afzal, son of Fazal, were immediately shifted to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Center (JPMC) for medico-legal formalities. No case was registered as further investigation was underway. Karachi has so far witnessed a series of similar blasts as recently, some unidentified motorcyclists attacked with crackers the ‘Kashmir rally’ organised by the one of the mainstream religio-political parties – Jamaat-e-Islami on the main University Road Karachi, a few days earlier, in which a senior activist of JI lost his life and about two dozen others were wounded.|

Similar attacks were also carried out by the armed motorcyclists on the Rangers and police for the past couple of months in Karachi. Investigators believe that the Indian spy agency RAW has been funding some Sindhi separatist groups, including Sindhu Desh Revolutionary Army, who might be behind these attacks. However, the investigators have failed to trace the terrorists.