KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah on Monday briefed the Sindh Assembly regarding the attack at the shrine of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar in Sehwan last month that had claimed 81 lives and left hundreds other injured.
The Sindh chief minister said an investigation into deadly Sehwan shrine bombing revealed security lapses, including non-functioning of some close circuit TV cameras installed at the spot.
The chief minister said that the police deployment at Lal Shahbaz Qalandar shrine was below strength as there was no specific security alert about the Shrine being on terrorist hit-list and attackers exploited it.
Murad said they did not have any “specific” security threat for Sehwan and conceded that the provincial authorities should have been extra vigilant after the blast at the Shah Noorani shrine in Balochistan’s Khuzdar district last year that claimed 52 lives.
The CM said shrine braved load-shedding during ‘dhamaal’ and moments later the blast ripped through the crowded area.
He expressed surprise, saying the power dues had already been cleared by the shrine administration and power outage at that time was incomprehensible. ‘The matter is under investigation,’ he added.
He said the functionality of CCTV cameras at the shrine was hampered by load shedding “which I am not responsible for”.
Because the cameras were being run on generators, he said, their resolution was affected. “Due to low voltage from the generators, the CCTV footage had turned black and white from colour.”
“Despite that, we have identified the suicide bomber after examining the footage from the same cameras,” he maintained.
He said the bomber and his facilitators had been identified, adding that the suicide bomber didn’t belong to Sindh.
He said rescue and law enforcement agencies quickly responded after the blast and performed their duties.
The CM lamented that it was reported by some sections of the media that no hospital was located within 50 kilometres of the blast site.
“Five hundred people were affected due to the blast but let’s admit it that 500 ambulances cannot be made available in Sehwan, considering the limited resources we have,” the Sindh chief minister said.
In Sehwan there is only a 50-bed hospital and a 20-bed trauma centre which is still being developed, Shah added.
“I can’t have a thousand-bed hospital in Sehwan. We do not have the resources, but whatever resources were available they were mobilised,” he told the house.It took just a few minutes to ambulances to reach the spot after the blast, he added.
It took just a few minutes to ambulances to reach the spot after the blast, he added.
The bombing at the famed Lal Shahbaz Qalandar shrine in Sindh was Pakistan’s deadliest attack in two years, killing at least 81 people and highlighting the threat of militant groups such as the Pakistani Taliban and Islamic State.
Foreign Policy Adviser to PM Sartaj Aziz blamed Jamaat-ur-Ahrar (JuA), a Pakistani Taliban faction that has been linked to the Islamic State, for the attack.
