The incident in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province occurred on the last day of the Eid al-Fitr festival, the culmination of the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan. In the recent past, several attacks on police stations and police officers have been linked to the radical Islamic TTP, a regional branch of the Taliban. The incident therefore sparked fears that it could be another attack.
However, the head of the anti-terrorist unit later explained that the explosions were caused by a short circuit in a basement where “grenades and other explosives” were stored. “There is no indication that the explosion was caused by an outside attack or by suicide bombers,” Shafi Ullah Gandapur told journalists.
Footage from the scene of the accident showed a body being pulled out of the rubble while small fires blazed in the darkness. Khalid Sohail, an official with the local anti-terrorist unit, said the blast caused “the complete collapse of the building.”
According to the local rescue service, at least twelve people died and 50 others were injured. At first there was talk of seven dead.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Police Inspector General Akhtar Hayat Gandapur confirmed the information. The police told the AFP news agency that there had been “a series of two to three bomb explosions”. According to him, “most of the victims” were police officers.
In January, a bomber wearing an explosive vest killed himself and more than 80 police officers in a mosque inside a police station in Peshawar. A month later, a TTP suicide squad stormed a police station in the port city of Karachi, killing five people and exchanging gunfire with police for hours.
Since the Taliban took power in neighboring Afghanistan, Pakistan has again experienced a sudden increase in attacks and attacks that are suspected to be motivated by Islamism.
