Cop killed in Peshawar grenade attack
PESHAWAR: Atackers threw a hand grenade at a police van in Peshawar on Friday, killing a policeman and wounding two others before fleeing the scene, police said. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the atack.
In a statement, Peshawar police said the atack happened while a government administrator was visiting market areas to ensure people were adhering to social distancing rules to contain the coronavirus.
Pakistani authorities have tasked police and government administrators to ensure that people wear face masks, ater the country saw a surge in COVID-19 cases flooding hospitals last week.
Earlier, the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) of Punjab claims to have arrested two suspects from Lahore in connection with their involvement in blasts in Johar Town, Lahore, and in a bus carrying Chinese engineers to Dasu project site in Khyber Pakthunkhwa (KP).
The suspected brothers were arrested from Defence where they had been living for the last 15 years. They had shited from Queta, a police official said, adding that the CTD acted on intelligence reports about their involvement in the terror acts.
As many as 13 people, including nine Chinese nationals, were killed when a bus taking workers to the 4,300-MW Dasu hydropower project was hit by a blast in the Upper Kohistan area in mid-july.
Similarly, a powerful bomb blast in a car had also let seven persons dead while over 15 others injured at Johar Town, Lahore, in the last week of June. The police claimed that the two suspects arrested from Lahore were involved directly or indirectly in the two terrorism activities. They have been shited to an undisclosed place for further interrogation, the source said.
Meanwhile, a Chinese national was shot at and wounded in a moving car by gunmen riding a motorbike in the SITE area of Karachi where he was supposed to repair imported machinery, officials said.
Another Chinese man and a local driver remained unhurt in the incident. The CTD Sindh official Raja Umar Khatab said that the banned Balochistan Liberation Front’s spokesperson Gohram through social media has claimed responsibility for the armed atack. The foreigners were without security guards as they were not associated with any government project.