Witnesses said the blast took place at around 6.40pm when passengers of Awami Express from Karachi were leaving the station and some others were waiting for the Night Coach to depart for Karachi.

The loud explosion damaged the waiting lounge for Business Express and shattered windowpanes of nearby shops and railway offices. The lounge was littered with shards and broken furniture with its windows blown away.

Railway authorities beefed up security at all major stations across the country. Security officials said the Business Express was not the target as it had left the station for Karachi at 3.30pm, but the explosive went off exactly outside its waiting lounge.

They said initial investigation showed that the explosion was neither timed nor remote-controlled but caused by a ‘touch’ device.

Witnesses said most of the victims, 14 women and eight children among them, suffered wounds from ball bearings and shards.

They were taken to Mayo, Sir Gang Ram and Services hospitals by Rescue 1122 and Edhi ambulances.Porter Mohammad Boota, 50, of Amar Sidhu, and railway police head-constable Idrees, also 50, of Narowal, died.

According to police, the porter was holding the bag which exploded, but some witnesses said it was lying on the platform.“I was putting the luggage of a passenger on a trolley when the huge blast shook us and we fell on the ground and I was hit by shells,” 25-year-old Mohammad Asif, a coolie, said.

“The explosion left windowpanes of Awami Express shattered. The train had arrived at platform 2 instead of 5 because of being late,” he told Dawn in Mayo Hospital.

Faisal Mehmood of Karachi, who suffered injuries along with his five-year-old son Noman, two brothers and two women of the family, said they were waiting for the Night Coach at the platform, a few feet away from where the explosion took place. “People ran in all directions leaving their luggage and carrying children.”

Noman, who suffered two wounds, appeared to be in shock.

Mohammad Mushtaq, who owns a stall at platform 4, said: “Some ball bearings also fell into my stall and we ran out as the blast triggered panic among people.”

A large number of people gathered in the hospitals after the incident.

Deputy Inspector General (Investigation) Ali Aamir Malik said the explosives were apparently being carried by the porter when they went off and severed his legs and one arm.

He said some passengers who were close to the place had been critically injured. The DIG said it appeared that a terrorist posing as a passenger might have given the bag to the porter to carry.

He said Awami Express had arrived 10 minutes before the explosion.

A large number of ball bearings had been found at the place, the official said.

He said the explosion didn’t have much impact on the ground possibly because the explosives were in porter’s hand.

Authorities said 17 closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras installed at the station were not functioning because the company maintaining them had suspended the service two months ago for non-payment of dues.

A railway police official said over two dozen personnel maintained security at the station round the clock.

The railway police registered a case under Sections 302 and 324 of the Pakistan Penal Code, Anti-Terrorism Act and Explosives Act.

Saleem Shahid adds from Quetta: An organisation calling itself Lashkar-i-Balochistan claimed responsibility for the bomb blast, saying it was to avenge the killing of Baloch women and children in Karachi, dumping of bullet-riddled bodies of Baloch youths, burning of a woman in Dera Bugti and torture on innocent people in the province.

The group’s spokesman Lavong Khan Baloch told reporters by phone that they did not want to target common citizens but the state machinery had forced them to commit such acts by attacking innocent people in Karachi and Balochistan.

He warned that Rawalpindi and Islamabad would be the next targets of his group if the killings of Baloch people and atrocities against them were not stopped.

Some observers found it difficult to accept the credibility of the claim made by the so far unheard of organisation and said it might have been a fictitious call made either to mislead the investigators or to pit the people of Punjab against Baloch nationalists.

A senior Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) official said that Bhoja Air owner Farooq Bhoja, who was earlier taken into custody by the agency for questioning was released on Sunday after initial investigation.

Bhoja was taken into custody on April 21 after Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) started its probe into the Bhoja Air plane crash which has raised questions over the fitness certificates and safety check procedures of the Civil Aviation Authorities while inspecting and permitting private airliners to operate within the country.FIA Sindh Director Muazzam Jah Ansari had said that Mr Bhoja was not arrested but just taken into custody for interrogation. He was taken into custody from his house in the Burns Road area of Karachi.

The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) also raided his office in the Nursery area and seized official documents for inquiry.

Earlier, Interior Minister Rehman Malik said that Mr Bhoja’s name has been placed on the Exit Control List (ECL).

Bhoja airlines operates a small fleet of aircraft on domestic routes and had to close down in 2000 due to financial difficulties before its relaunch in 2011.

Islamic protests have erupted in Pakistan over possible changes to the nation’s notorious blasphemy laws.Sunni Muslim clerics organized a 24-hour strike across Pakistan on Friday against amending blasphemy laws that are currently being used to sentence Christian Asia Bibi to death.

The protests were staged in Islamabad, Lahore, Karachi, Pershawar and Quetta after their Friday prayers. The government of the largely Muslim country has since backed off efforts to soften the laws in response to the protest.

The global community has criticized the blasphemy laws for creating an environment of persecution and oppression minorities.

The law, which dates back to the 1980s, penalizes blasphemers of Islamic prophet Mohammed with death. A similar law punishes those who defile the Quran with life imprisonment. Critics say these rules are being abused.

According to the National Commission for Justice and Peace, a human rights organization of the Catholic Church in Pakistan, accusations of blasphemy rose to more than 110 during the year 2010.

Prior to the protests, the country’s leadership had quietly been reconsidering the Sharia-based laws. Paskistan’s Federal Minister for Minorities Affairs, Shahbaz Bhatti, publicly declared that blasphemy victim Bibi is innocent. President Asif Ali Zardari was also reportedly considering revisions to the country’s blasphemy laws, according Catholic foreign news service AsiaNews.

Muslim extremists have tried to thwart such actions by offering a money for Bibi’s death and threatening attacks. A cleric has already offered 500,000 rupees – roughly $5,800 – to anyone who kills the Pakistani Christian mother and step-mother of five. The Taliban also has threatened retribution should she be spared.

Global pressure continues to mount. Raza Anjum, a British councilor from the U.K. city of Saffron Waldon in Essex, went to Pakistan during the Christmas season to try to secure Bibi’s release. Since his arrival in Pakistan, he has met with the Minister for Minority Affairs and plans to meet with the governor of the province where Bibi is jailed and with Pakistan’s prime minister, Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani, over the next several days.

Anjum also held a press conference on December 23 with members of the Pakistani and international press to discuss his attempts to secure Bibi’s release.

Bibi, the first the woman to be sentenced to death under the blasphemy law, continues to sit in prison. She spent Christmas in jail while her family of five children and a husband are currently in hiding, fearing similar persecution.

Source : The Christian Post