By Amjad Ali
Islamabad, Jan 31 (EFE).- As soon as a suicide bomber blew himself up, scenes of blood, bodies, smoke, panic and injured crying for help gripped the mosque in Pakistan’s Peshawar city, where the long gone terror has returned, according to eyewitness accounts.
Government data released Tuesday said the death toll had reached to 100, most of them policemen, and 157 others were wounded in one of the deadliest attacks against the police force in Pakistan.
The sound of the blast was heard many kilometers from the mosque, which is situated in one of the provincial capital’s most sensitive and secure areas.
The powerful blast not only took down the roof of the mosque but also shattered many buildings around it. Police said around 12kg of explosives was used in the blast.
Officials are still investigating how the suicide bomber was able to enter the heavily guarded police compound where the mosque is located.
Inayat Ullah, a local politician, said that he was inside the police compound when the explosion happened.
“It was so powerful that it shook all the doors and walls of the office I was in,” he told Efe.
Ullah rushed to the scene with a police officer he was meeting and saw “most horrifying scenes” of his life.
“When I reached the mosque, there was smoke, dead bodies and body pieces all around and people were shouting for help,” Ullah said.
According to an official at the Lady Reading Hospital, dead body after dead body was being brought to the hospital with at least 10 in such a bad condition that they were almost unrecognizable.
“Human organs had been separated from several corpses,” Asim Khan, a spokesman for LRH, told Efe.
Zia Uddin, a rescuer at Al-Khidmat Foundation, said that when he reached the scene, he saw a person buried under the debris after a pillar of the building fell on his foot.
“He was shouting again and again, cut off the foot but take me out.”
Tahir Afridi, another rescue worker who shifted several dead bodies and injured to the hospital by ambulance, said that several people succumbed to their injuries in front of him.
“I picked up one, he died, I rushed to the other, he also died and another near him died the same moment,” Afridi told Efe.
Naveed Khan, a spokesman for the Peshawar police said that along with regular Police Force, Reserve, Counter-terrorism and Investigation Police are also stationed at the compound. He added police personnel from all over the province were at the compound.EFE
aa/jt
