World | Pakistan
Police investigate Islamabad blast
Investigators on Monday examined the site of a suicide blast in Islamabad that targeted police and left at least 15 people dead, while officials sorted out clues about the alleged attacker.
- AP
- Published: 10:49 July 7, 2008
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Deadly blast hits near Pakistan mosque
At least 15 killed in blast near Pakistan Red Mosque
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Suicide blast kills 10 police officers
Suicide blast kills 10 police officers
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Blast site littered with body parts
Blast site littered with body parts
Islamabad: Investigators on Monday examined the site of a suicide blast in Islamabad that targeted police and left at least 15 people dead, while officials sorted out clues about the alleged attacker.
No one has claimed responsibility for the explosion, which also injured dozens and appeared to be the capital's deadliest in about a year.
It unnerved the usually tranquil city the same day thousands of Islamists marked the one-year anniversary of a military siege on the nearby radical Red Mosque.
"This is against humanity," Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani told reporters Monday after visiting some victims at an Islamabad hospital. "The law will take the culprits in its grip."
Hours after the blast, Interior Ministry chief Rehman Malik told Geo TV that a teenage boy was the suspected attacker, though earlier he said it was a man apparently in his 30s.
"All witnesses say that a 15- or 16-year-old boy, who had a light beard and wore a white shalwar kameez came walking toward our police and blasted himself," Malik said.
Malik had also initially said authorities found the "upper part" of the attacker's body. Malik also told Geo that components of a suicide jacket and two severed human legs were recovered.
"The crisis we are going through at this time, it is so serious that if we do not control ourselves, it can get even more serious and perhaps we will not be able to control it then," said the embattled President Pervez Musharraf.
It was not clear if the attack was linked to the conference held Sunday to remember last July's government seige of the Red Mosque, and a mosque official condemned the assault.
"This is a very tragic and condemnable incident," mosque spokesman Mohammed Amir Siddiq told The Associated Press.
The attack Sunday came after recent threats of revenge from Pakistani Taliban leaders angered by a paramilitary operation against insurgents in Khyber tribal area in the northwest.
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