By NNN-APP/PTI
Rawalpindi : Six people including three policemen, two passers-by and a passenger were killed while 15 others sustained injuries four of them seriously in a bomb blast here on Tuesday.
DIG Rawalpindi Saud Aziz told reporters that the blast took place at 12.08 pm as police personnel tried to stop a suspect who blew himself up killing three policemen and three civilians on the spot.
A passenger van passing by was also hit by the blast and the passengers were hit by the splinters killing one passenger and wounding 15 others, police said.
High officials of police and district Management rushed to the spot. Rescue teams reached the spot to carry out rescue operations.
DIG Saud Aziz said that the wounded had been shifted to different hospitals for medical treatment.
Bodies of three policemen and the suicide bomber were torn into pieces.
Giving details the DIG said a suspected person was stopped by the three police personnel on duty at the police post near Ayub Park.
He said the three police personnel who sacrificed their lives by checking the attacker were Akram, Nasim and Atta Muhammad. He said the other victims were two passers-by and a passenger in Toyota Hiace van.
Saud Aziz said Federal Ministry of Interior had already warned about a possible attack due to which the security had been beefed up and kept on alert.
He said security at the sensitive areas has been enhanced and extra force deployed to minimize risk of the terrorist activity. The affected area has been cordoned off.
Dawn News Channel menawhile reported that the blast took place near the official residence of Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf while the president was chairing a meeting of the chief ministers and governors at the Army House in the high-security area of the garrison city.
The blast was heard from several kilometres away, Dawn News channel reported. Railway Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, a close aide of Musharraf, said it “seems to be suicide attack”.
A red alert had been sounded in the twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi Monday following intelligence reports that two to three suicide bombers had entered the city in the wake of the fierce clashes between security forces and militants in the Swat region of North West Frontier Province.
Rashid said that security agencies had intensified checking in the national capital following reports that three suicide attackers had entered the city.