Roadside explosion kills one in Rawalpindi

RAWALPINDI: A roadside bomb exploded near a busy bus terminal in the Pakistani garrison city of Rawalpindi on Friday, killing at least one person and wounding seven others, police said.

Initially police said the bomb was planted in an auto-rickshaw, but a Rawalpindi police statement later confirmed the blast was from a device planted on the side of the road.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the explosion. Pakistani TV stations and videos on social media showed a burned-out rikshaw surrounded by police and emergency services.

The Pakistani military’s headquarters and the offices of the country’s spy agencies are located in Rawalpindi, about 15 kilometres south of the capital Islamabad. In June, a similar roadside bomb atack struck a crowded bazaar in Rawalpindi, killing at least one and wounding 15.

Pakistan has witnessed scores of militant atacks on security forces in recent years.

In October, a powerful bomb blast ripped through an Islamic seminary on the outskirts of the northwestern city of Peshawar, killing at least eight students and wounding 136 others.

Separately, the Supreme Court observed that detaining an accused for 90 days by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on physical remand in every case is cruel and injustice.

Justice Umar Ata Bandial was heading a three-judge bench that had taken up 25 appeals moved by the anti-grat watchdog and clubbed together against a Feb.15, 2017 judgment of the Peshawar High Court (PHC).

The issue concerns filing of multiple references against accused by NAB. One of the appeals concerns Arshad Khan, former director general of tribal area Disaster Management Authority, facing allegations of granting approval and forwarding fake and bogus claims of 161 persons, embezzling Rs59.6 million from the grants which were to be distributed as compensation among the affectees for the damage caused to their houses due to security operations in Mohmand Agency.