Six injured in Peshawar car bomb blast

PESHAWAR: A powerful car bomb blast ripped through the Kalibari locality in the Saddar area on Saturday causing injuries to six people, including two women, and damaging four shops. The closed-circuit television cameras (CCTV) footage showed a bearded man wearing a shawl parking the 86 model white Toyota Corolla in the street before the explosion. “Around eight to 10 kilogram explosives were fitted in the car that went off at around 8.40 am,” Capital City Police Officer (CCPO) Qazi Jamilur Rehman told The News. He said six persons, including two women, sustained injuries in the explosion. The injured were rushed to a hospital. The injured were identified as Mukhtiara, Robia, Mohammad Farooq, Ibrahim Khan, Rehmat Gul and Umair. Four nearby shops were also damaged in the explosion.

“The police are investigating to find if the target of the blast was the general public to create terror or it was meant to hit the office of a religious group located nearby,” a source said.

The source said it would not be hard for the investigators to identify the perpetrators because the face of the man parking the car was visible in the CCTV footage.

The blast is the first in Peshawar in 2019.

The explosion is also the first in the provincial capital in at least the past three months. The city otherwise suffered frequent bomb explosions in the past years causing casualties and damage to properties. However, the situation has improved considerably in recent years and the people have heaved a sigh of relief.

Provincial Information Minister Shaukat Yousafzai and spokesman for the KP government Ajmal Wazir condemned the blast and said the wounded were out of danger.

Ajmal Wazir said the explosion did not cause more casualties as there weren’t many people nearby at the time of the blast.

Cautioning that the blast could be an alarm bell for the future, Awami National Party General Secretary Mian Iftikhar Hussain, urged the government to take effective measures to protect the life and property of the people.

He felt the person who parked the car could be easily identified from the CCTV footage and the government and its agencies should take no time to trace out the network behind the act of terror.

Mian Iftikhar Hussain said the government should take measures before the terrorists could regroup and stage more attacks.