ISLAMABAD/LAHORE: Pakistani police scoured hills surrounding the capital Islamabad and sent additional units to protect key installations on Monday amid tightened security ahead of a major Muslim holiday and after a bomb wounded 14 people on a train.
Police and soldiers go on alert every year in the closing days of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, which this year coincides with a global security alert issued by the United States which closed more than a dozen embassies in the Middle East and Africa following an Al-Qaeda threat.
“We have beefed up security in Islamabad, particularly at the Faisal Mosque since there is a security threat,” Mohammad Rizwan, a senior police officer, told Reuters.
“We have also combed the Margalla Hills, setting up pickets at certain points.”
The mosque is the largest in Pakistan and sits at the foot of the majestic Margalla Hills, the first foothills to the Himalayas.
The bomb exploded on a train traveling between the southern financial hub of Karachi and the ancient city of Lahore, capital of Punjab province. No one was killed.
It was unclear whether police were hunting a specific target or whether the increased security was a reaction to an embarrassing jail break last week in which more than 250 prisoners were freed from jail in a militant attack.
Pakistan’s police are notoriously under-equipped, poorly trained and under-funded. Security forces sometimes resort to blanket bans to counter potential threats, for instance by banning motorcycles or shutting down telephone networks.
The bomb explosion wounded 14 people, officials said, in what the railways minister called “an act of terrorism.”
The device on the Shalimar Express from the eastern city of Lahore to Karachi went off as it passed through fields near the town of Toba Tek Singh in Punjab province. “It was an act of terrorism. The explosive was planted in the washroom of a bogie (wagon),” railways minister Saad Rafique told reporters in Lahore.
“Fourteen people have been injured, condition of three of them is critical.” TV footage showed the explosion had damaged the roof of the carriage but not forced the train off the rails, suggesting a relatively low-intensity blast.
Farah Masood, a senior government official in Lahore, confirmed to AFP that a locally-made explosive device was used in the explosion and that 14 people had been injured.
Pakistan is battling a homegrown insurgency and faces near-daily bombings and shootings in the troubled northwest, but attacks on the railway are relatively rare.
A bomb near the waiting lounge for the luxury Lahore-Karachi Business Express train last year killed two people.
Islamabad alert after train blast wounds 14
