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50 killed in bus blast

at Bhai Phero

SHAHID MALIK

LAHORE: Official sources have confirmed the death tally of 50, as a result of a powerful blast which ripped off a passenger bus at Bhai Phero about 40 kilometres south of Lahore, one day before Eid-ul-Azha.

According to eye witnesses, the impact was so severe that the interior of the bus, reduced to a wreckage littered with human skulls and limbs, offered a most horrifying spectacle. Driver Mohammad Aslam told this correspondent that he had heard two explosions within a span of two minutes, but with the bus having been engulfed in flames immediately after the first blast, it was not possible for most of the passengers to get down.

Speaking on telephone from the nearby town of Pattoki, Haji Mohammad Iqbal of the local Edhi Centre disclosed that their staff had counted 36 dead bodies, in addition to four other passengers who died on their way to the hospital.

Giving details of the explosion, Sher Mohammad, 35 years old conductor of the ill-fated bus said that they had left Lahore for Bhai Phero on way to Pattoki at about 8.00 a.m. but the blast occurred around 10.30 at the Katch Kotthi bus stop in Bhai Phero. He also confirmed that there were two explosions, though he was not sure if the second blast was cause by the fuel tank which may have exploded.

Edhi Centre sources attributed the confusion about the death toll to the simple fact that some of the bodies had been mutilated beyond count.

If clothes and broken pieces of jewellery were a reliable indicator, then there must be a certain number of women among the dead, they said.

Dr Aslam Joya at the Casualty Department in the Mayo Hospital here told newsmen that as many as 11 out of a total of 13 people admitted were not out of danger. Most of the injured had severe burns and were receiving treatment but the number of those still struggling to regain consciousness was only two, he added.