GHAZI/PESHAWAR: At least 20 personnel of the Pakistan Army Special Services Group (SSG) were killed and dozens others sustained injures in a blast at the Officers’ Mess of the sensitive cantonment area of Tarbela-Ghazi on Thursday evening.
All those killed in the blast were the well-trained commandos from the SSG, said sources. There were rumours that CIA personnel were also present in the area where the blast occurred.
ISPR Director General Maj-Gen Waheed Arshad, when approached on phone, confirmed the death of 15 security personnel in the blast. Sources told The News that soon after officials of the Special Services Group gathered at the mess, a suicide bomber entered the area and blew himself up killing a number of officials present.
However, the ISPR DG said so far they have no information whether it was a suicide attack or a remote control bomb blast. The blast, which was heard in distant areas, created panic among the residents of the adjacent Wapda colonies.
The security forces immediately sealed the area but so far there is no report of any arrest of suspects. The seriously injured security personnel were shifted to military hospitals in Islamabad and Rawalpindi in ambulances while others were admitted to the Combined Military Hospital, Attock.
The area where the incident occurred is headquarters of the Special Services Group also known as SSG and Special Operation Task Force of the Pakistan Army. Sources said the blast was so powerful that it destroyed the Officers’ Mess.
There are also reports that a company known as Karar of the SSG based in the area had taken part in the operation on Lal Masjid and Jamia Hafsa in Islamabad where hundreds of religious students, including religious school administrator, Maulana Abdur Rashid Ghazi, were killed.
Nobody has so far taken the responsibility of the attack on SSG Officers’ Mess. It was the first ever incident of its kind in Tarbela-Ghazi which is far away
from the troubled tribal areas where security forces and tribal militants have been fighting each others.
Agencies add: The explosion coincided with heavy fighting in Pakistan’s tribal areas and the visit of US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte. “The commandos were taking dinner in their mess at Tarbela town when a suspected suicide bomber blew himself up at its gate,” a security official told AFP.
President Pervez Musharraf condemned the “unfortunate incident.” “Such cowardly acts of killing innocent people cannot be left unpunished,” Musharraf said, according to the official Associated Press of Pakistan.
The army spokesman did not confirm the forces took part in the operation. The blast also disrupted the communication system in the region and the security forces cordoned of the area after the blast.
Investigators were also sent to the area to investigate the blast, local TV reported. Tarbela is a highly sensitive area because of the location of the country’s biggest dam, known as Tarbela Dam (or the National Dam). The dam on the Indus River in Pakistan is at a height of 485ft above the river bed and a reservoir size of 95 sq miles makes it the largest earth filled dam in the world. The dam was completed in 1974 and was designed to store water from the Indus River for irrigation and flood control, and for the generation of hydroelectric power.
