ISLAMABAD: A suicide bomber rammed a car packed with explosives into a school bus on G T Road near the air force base in Kamra on Monday, killing himself and wounding about nine people, mostly children, the military said.
“A terrorist targeted a schoolchildren’s bus. The driver and the guard who were sitting in the front have been seriously injured,” said military spokesman Major General Waheed Arshad. “Because of the timely reaction of the driver, the children were saved. Only about six or seven children were injured,” he added. “It was outside the Kamra air base. It was specially targeting the schoolchildren’s bus.”
The bus was taking a group of children to school when it came under attack, said the military spokesman. The suicide attacker died in the incident, Arshad said, adding that there were about 35 children on the bus.
Strongly condemning the incident, he said it was a cowardly act of terrorism. The deputy police officer Kamra told mediamen that at least five to six children were among the injured and medical aid is being given to them.
According to eyewitnesses, security forces immediately closed the Kamra-Attock road and cordoned off the entire area. An investigation has been launched into the incident. The spokesman said the wounded children had been taken to a nearby hospital. The base is about 60 km northwest of the capital, Islamabad.
A separate air force statement said five children and three adults on the bus were wounded in the attack in Kamra, about 70 kilometres northwest of Islamabad, with one of them in serious condition.
It said the bus belonged to the Pakistan Aeronautical Complex, the manufacturing division of the air force, and that it happened on the outskirts of one of its factories. “The suicide attacker was in a white Toyota Corolla car, which was blown up into many small pieces,” senior local police official Zulfiqar Hussain Shah told AFP.
A police officer in the
nearby town of Attock told AFP the bus was carrying children of air force employees to a Pakistan Air Force school at the complex. “They were students at the PAF school,” police officer Mukhtar Ahmed said. The attack came a day after a suicide bomber rammed a car packed with explosives into a police checkpost in Swat valley in the northwest, killing 13 people.
