And the lack of security apparatus
So far the country had been facing terrorist attacks launched by the TTP only. The Lahore blast indicates the emergence of a new source of violence. A spokesman of the banned Lashkare Balochistan, comprising ethnic extremists, has claimed responsibility for the attack, maintaining that it was in retaliation to dead bodies being dumped across Balochistan. The organisation warned that if the killings continued, their next target would be Rawalpindi and Islamabad. Hours after the Lahore blast, a bomb was defused at Attock railway station.
That only two persons died in the blast was due to the primitive type of the bomb which had no time device. The ball bearings it contained, however, wounded over sixty people. During the initial attacks by the TTP also the number of mortal casualties used to be low. The terrorist however tend to become more lethal with the passage of time. The security arrangements at the Lahore railway station have been found to be inadequate. According to the CPO, none of the 17 CCTV cameras was in a working condition. There are also reports of walk-through gates and metal detectors being non-functional. Another report tells of the company maintaining the scanners having suspended service two months ago for non payment of the dues by the Pakistan Railways. If this is the security situation at the second busiest station in the country after Karachi, one can imagine what havoc terrorists can wreak at other stations.
It is dastardly to target innocent people for any cause whatsoever. Earlier, ethnic extremists have killed teachers, doctors, businessmen, even labourers and barbers coming to Balochistan from other provinces which was rightly condemned in the country. What one is constrained to note, however, is that acts of the sort, once unheard of in Balochistan, started to take place only after the killing of Akbar Bugti who was a pro-Pakistan Baloch leader. The subsequent operations in the province, accompanied by involuntary disappearances of political activists and extrajudicial killings further aggravated the situation. There is a need to rein in the state agencies. Unless this is done, a new group of highly motivated terrorists is likely to start endangering the lives of people all over Pakistan.