Thirteen people have died in a main Pakistani city
after drinking cough syrup suspected of being toxic, police said Monday. The victims were
all drug addicts who apparently drank the cough syrup in an attempt to get
high, said police officer Multan Khan. Khan said they died at various hospitals
in the eastern city of Lahore over the past three days. Five other addicts who
drank the cough syrup were being treated.
Police arrested the owners of three drug stores where
the cough syrup was sold and sent a sample to determine whether it was toxic,
said Khan. Elsewhere in the country, a bomb hidden in a cement construction
block exploded in the southern city of Karachi killing one person, said senior
police officer Farooq Awan. Four other people were wounded, he said. The bomb
contained about 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) of explosives and was detonated by a
mobile phone, said Awan.
Pakistan suspended mobile phone service throughout
most of the country on Saturday and Sunday to prevent attacks against shiite Muslims during a major religious commemoration. Despite the ban, a pair of bombings
over the weekend killed at least 13 people. Awan, the police officer, said he
suspected the bomb in Karachi was meant to target Shiites over the weekend, but
militants were not able to detonate it because of the mobile phone ban.
Shiites are currently observing the holy month of Muharram. Pakistani Shiites on Sunday marked Ashoura, the most important day of the
month. Pakistan has a long history of Sunni Muslim extremists targeting
Shiites, who they consider heretics. Also Monday, police in Pakistan's capital,
Islamabad, found and defused a bomb planted underneath the car of one of
Pakistan's most prominent TV anchors, Hamid Mir of Geo Television.
The bomb was made up of half a kilogram (1 pound) of
explosives stuffed in a tin can, said Islamabad police chief Bani Amin. It was
placed in a bag and attached to the bottom of Mir's car, said Amin. One of
Mir's neighbors noticed the bomb underneath the car after the TV anchor
returned from a local market, and the police were notified, said Rana Jawad, a
senior official at Geo TV.
Source: Times of India
Please share
No comments:
Post a Comment