Daily Times

LAHORE: Gloomy prevailed across the city on Tuesday as 13 bodies, including those of seven policemen and a teenage girl, were handed over to their families, while the limbs of an unidentified man – possibly the suicide bomber – were still lying in city mortuary.

More than 50 injured, including two women, were still under treatment at different city hospitals, while several victims with minor injuries were discharged after being provided first aid.

According to hospital sources, several injured were still fighting for their lives, which means the death toll could rise. On Tuesday morning, senior police officials and medical professionals reached the city mortuary of the King Edward Medical University for legal procedures. Police cordon off the entire area and no one was allowed to enter the premises. The police had handed over six bodies, including those of 14-year-old Fatima Jamshed and AAJ TV cameraman Abdul Rehman, to their heirs after fulfilling the medico-legal formalities. The autopsies of seven policemen, including Traffic DIG Syed Ahmad Mobin, SSP (Operations) Zahid Gondal and officials of the traffic police, Dolphin Squad and CTD, were conducted at the city mortuary.

The bodies were later shifted to the Elite Police Training Centre, Bedian Road, in ambulances one by one with full protocol for their joint funeral prayer.

After the blast, several citizens were seen searching for their loved ones who did not return home due to some reason and were not even responding to the phone calls of their relatives.

People carrying the pictures of their missing relatives were still visiting the city morgue and different hospitals for the identification or their dear ones. Moving scenes were witnessed in and around the mortuary of Mayo Hospital, where people collapsed after seeing the bodies of their relatives.

Meanwhile, security was beefed up across the city, especially at the entry and exit points. Heavy contingents of police were also deployed at public hospitals across the city. The public was allowed entry to the hospitals only after frisking and complete checking with latest equipment. Law enforcers also closed The Mall from Regal Chowk to Charing Cross for some time to collect evidence in the daylight.

On the other hand, the administrations of different hospitals said that all senior professors, doctors, nurses and other paramedical staff had been called in to treat the patients. They cleared that they had sufficient medicines, blood and other facilities to treat the patients, adding that upon being informed a number of donors also reached the hospitals to donate their blood.