Lahore -  Taj Company Underpass Bridge is almost twenty feet high: a magnificent vantage point over the old city of Lahore. Take a U- turn from Niazi Adda towards the city and there it is, the first Lahori welcome for travellers coming in from Sheikhupura.

But Monday night’s blast in a fruit truck parked in a parking lot – about 60 feet away – was so great that the high bridge is scattered with debris from the blast site. Two people lost their lives while 40 others were injured. People coming in from Sheikhpura city or from areas like Sherakot or Bund Road wandered the high bridge at rush hour on Tuesday morning. From that height, the blast site, its huge dark crater surrounded by a security cordon, was easily visible.

A mini-truck loaded with gas cylinders and another covered vehicle were parked by the main gate near the blast site where police officials now roamed. They seemed unfazed by the other vehicles.

“It was 9 pm and suddenly the light went off,” said Riaz Ahmad, a lawyer’s assistant who lives near Mian Munshi Hospital.

“We heard a huge bang and outside there was nothing but smoke and crying people,” he said.

Ayub, 19, said, “I rushed to the scene after the blast and it was dark everywhere,” he said. “We were unable to locate the injured or to help them go to the hospital, because we couldn’t see anything.”

Muhammad Pervez, a security guard who had been positioned at the parking lot before the explosives went off said he was in such shock that he couldn’t remember the name of a colleague.

“I asked one of the other guards why this truck had been parked here for the last six days. I asked him who the owner was and he only told me it was a pathan from Swat,” he said.

According to Pervez, the pathan came Monday morning at 4 am and told them that he had lost his parking token during a police search in the city. Then he left without taking his truck out of the parking stand. “I don’t remember anything but a huge bang and then the darkness,” he said.