KARACHI - An explosion outside the Rangers Headquarters in North Nazimabad left six people wounded on Wednesday.
Passers-by and shopkeepers, who were identified as Rana Bukhsh, Irfan, Nadeem Irshad, Ghulam Abbas, and Khalida Siraj, were among the blast victims. They were hurried to Abbasi Shaheed Hospital where doctors termed the condition of an injured critical.
According to some eye-witnesses, a Rangers vehicle passing by the site was the main target as the explosives were planted in a motorbike parked nearby. As the Rangers vehicle crossed the site, the explosives went off with a huge bang. The Ranger vehicle’s windowpanes were shattered into pieces but the personnel onboard remained unhurt.
Following the blast, the school located within the Headquarters premises was immediately evacuated as the children and staffers who got traumatised were sent to their homes. Police, Rangers and bomb disposal squad teams rushed to the site and cordon off the area.
SHO Nawaz Gondal said that they have found registration number plate of the motorcycle used in the blast. However, further investigation was underway. The BDS confirmed that 5-kg explosives were used in the remote-control blast.
The same Rangers Headquarters has been targeted for the third time. For the first time on November 8, 2012, a suicide bomber rammed an explosive-laden pickup truck into the gate of the same Rangers Headquarters, killing three personnel and wounding at least 26 others. Investigators believed that Shair Khan Mehsud, a local chief of TTP Kanwari Colony, had dispatched the bomber but Shair Khan had been killed a couple of months ago by his rival TTP operatives in Mangopir area.
In three more attacks at Rangers in January this year claimed the lives of four including three Rangers men and wounded eight others. The first bomb was planted by the roadside under Nazimabad No 7 Flyover, another bomb blast just after a15-minute gape at the same place while the third explosion took place at the same Ranger Headquarters with a gape of two hours.
Investigators believed the TTP operatives Naeem Bukhari and Azizullah Shamzai groups were involved in the attacks, but this time, the TTP’s Abid Muchar group is considered to be the mastermind of the blast. The security agencies suspected that the blast was the reaction of the May 16 operation in which Police and Rangers teams had killed a closed aide of Muchar while Muchar managed to escape with bullet injures.
Muchar is considered to be the commander of TTP’s Waliur Rehman group and involved in various high profile cases of terrorism including the killing several police personnel.