PESHAWAR: A blast on Peshawar’s Ring Road, left a government official and two others injured on Friday.
A motorcycle containing the explosive material was completely destroyed after the explosion occurred near a state-owned vehicle carrying Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Provincial Disaster Management Authority Deputy Director Muhammad Shakeel. He was driving past Dir Colony.
Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan’s Jamaatul Ahrar faction claimed responsibility for the attack.
PDMA spokesperson said that the director and his assistant were safe.
The injured were driven to the Lady Reading Hospital and Naseerullah Khan Babar Memorial Hospital where two of them have been identified as Latif, 29, and Wadan Gul, 47. Medics said their wounds were not life threatening.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the IED attack, but similar assaults in the past had been carried out by different Taliban factions.
“Three kilogrammes of explosive material was detonated through a remote control bomb,” said Bomb Disposal Unit AIG Shafqat Malik.
The vehicle’s driver Wardan Gul and a passer-by were wounded in the incident, the police said.
The intensity of the explosion also damaged nearby buildings, police officials informed. Rescue services and law enforcement agencies, including the army, reached the site of the incident and investigations into the incident are currently underway.
The Counter Terrorism Department will probe into the matter and trace the chassis number of the vehicle used in the attack.
A suicide bombing in the city’s Hayatabad area, last year, resulted in the martyrdom of Additional IG Headquarter Muhammad Ashraf Noor. Eight police personnel were also injured in the attack after a suicide bomber riding on a motorcycle rammed into the additional IG’s vehicle near Tatara Park.
Published in Daily Times, February 24th 2018.
