RAWALPINDI – On a bright sunny morning on April 10, 1988, an explosion rocked Rawalpindi. A mushroom cloud of black smoke bellowed up thousands of feet into the sky followed by an incessant rain of rockets and projectiles that continued the whole day.
The flying rockets hit unsuspecting people several kilometres away from the scene of the fire in an ammunition depot in Faizabad at the junction of Rawalpindi and Islamabad. The blasts continued at almost regular intervals. When the initial salvo died down the sound of secondary blasts could be heard for the next several days. There was chaos all around.
All at once the city roads and streets were littered with the dead and dying. Official estimates put the dead at about 100 and over 1,000 injured. Unofficial count placed the dead at several hundreds. The damage would have been worst if a large number of rockets that fell several kilometres had also exploded. These rockets did not explode just because they were not fused.
Initial official reaction said the blast was caused by an act of sabotage. Later, however, it was claimed that the explosion had been caused by an accident. People of the twin cities still remember that deadly blast even after passage of some 23 years.
