Daily Times

MARDAN: At least 12 people, including three policemen, were injured in a failed suicide bombing near the City Police Station in Mardan on Monday evening.

According to Mardan Regional Police Officer (RPO) Tahir Khan, the bomber was about to target a police vehicle standing outside the City Police Station at the District Courts Square when two policemen got suspicious of him and signalled him to stop. However, the bomber kept walking and opened fire on the policemen, said the official. He said that policemen returned the fire, which prompted the bomber to explode his suicide vest. The official said that all those injured in the blast were out of danger.

Later, the bomb disposal squad found a five kilogram improvised explosive device fixed to a bicycle and defused it. The bicycle was believed to be parked there by the bomber.

The blast was so intense that it was heard in a 25-kilometre radius in Mardan’s suburban areas and shattered the windowpanes of nearby buildings.

Dr Arshad at the District Headquarters Hospital in Mardan confirmed to Daily Times that eight injured people, including a minor girl identified as Aleena, were brought to the casualty department of the hospital.

Seven others were identified as Zahir Shah, Liaqat Shah, Waqar, Muhammad Yousaf, Shakirullah, Syed Ghafar Shah and Saqib. Some of the injured were also taken to Mardan Medical Complex (MMC).

This has been the third suicide bombing in recent months in Mardan.

Earlier in mid April, a suicide bomber forced his entry into the excise and taxation department offices hardly 200 yards from the City Police Station on The Mall and exploded his vest just at the entrance of the offices. One person was killed and 17 were injured in this attack.

According to the police officials, the bomber would have wreaked havoc had he succeeded in entering the offices. However, a security official stopped him at the entrance gate and this prompted the bomber to blow himself up. A journalist, identified as Yousaf Khan, was also injured in the attack.

Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a splinter group of the banned Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), claimed responsibility for the attack. TTP spokesperson Ehsanullah Ehsan said in his telephonic message to journalists that the group was behind the attack.

On December 29, 2015, 26 people lost their lives when a suicide bomber struck outside the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) offices. Around 50 people sustained injuries in the attack. The TTP claimed responsibility for this attack too. The NADRA office attack was one of the deadliest in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province since the December 16, 2014 terrorist attack on the Army Public School on Warsak Road in Peshawar wherein around 150 schoolchildren, teachers and soldiers were killed. Dozens of others were injured in the APS attack.

According to the eyewitnesses, the NADRA office bomber in Mardan had arrived on a motorbike. A security guard stopped him from entering the registration office and the attacker blew himself up just outside the office. The office is usually crowded with people seeking computerised national identity cards.