Two Killed As Roadside Bomb Hit Durrani’s Motorcade

A roadside bomb apparently targeting Federal minister for Housing and Works Akram Khan Durrani killed at least two people and injured three others on Thursday.

A police official said that the minister’s motorcade was on its way back from Bakakhel when a remote device hit one of the vehicles in the motorcade.

He has also condoled the death of his two guards in the attack.

Federal Minister remained unhurt as his vehicle had already cross the spot, police said adding the killed were identified as Ehsan s/o Ghulam Daud and Arif s/o Ejaz.

Akram Durrani, who remained the chief minister of the erstwhile NWFP (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) for five years from 2002 to 2007, is a prominent leader of the JUI-F and a close confidant of party chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman. Two health officials on board an ambulance in the minister’s motorcade succumbed to their injuries while the driver of the vehicle sustained serious wounds. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack yet.

Soon after the attack, red alert was declared in the area and heavy contingent of police were deployed to apprehend the militants.

The sources said the soldiers launched a search operation in the surrounding areas but no arrest was made.

He also issued a call for countrywide protest against the attack.

The army has intensified and expanded its offensive since the Taliban’s massacre of more than 150 people, the majority of them children, in a school in the northwestern city of Peshawar last December.