Ranger, passerby killed in Karachi

By Hasan Mansoor and Intikhab Ali

KARACHI: A three-way armed attack on a stationary mobile unit of the paramilitary Rangers – the first ever on the force in the province – in the city’s Baloch Colony area killed one of its personnel and a passerby and injured three others, officials said.

“At least three armed men in two cars attacked a van of Ghazi Rangers killing one of our sepoys and injuring three others,” Director General of Pakistan Rangers, Major-General Javed Zia, told reporters on the spot. “This is the first terrorist attack on our personnel.”

Asked whether the attack on the Rangers van had any link to the military operation in Wana or was a reaction to it, Gen Zia said: “It is too early to say. Our investigations are in their preliminary stages and we can’t establish any specific clues.” However, the Inspector General of Sindh Police, Syed Kamal Shah, said it was one of the many possibilities suspected by the investigators.

Witnesses said it was about 3:25pm when two white cars, one of them carrying government licence plates, pulled up close to the Rangers’ van beneath the Shaheed-e-Millat Bridge. Men inside took out AK-47 assault rifles and pistols and opened fire on the van.

In the meantime, a police guard, Abid, deputed at a branch of the National Bank of Pakistan, regained his senses early and came to the rescue of the Rangers personnel by opening fire with his official gun on the attackers.

Witnesses said the attackers also tried to hurl a locally made grenade onto the mobile van, but it failed to explode. “We have the pin of that grenade which appears to be indigenously made,” Mr Shah said.

“At least one of the attackers was injured in the exchange of fire,” Mr Zia said. The injured were shifted to Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre where one of the injured men, Ishtiaq Hussain, 32, succumbed to his injuries.

The injured included two Rangers personnel, Hawaldar Mohammad Munir and Naik Mushtaq Ali. Four pedestrians who sustained bullet injuries were Munir Ahmed, Nawab, Mansoor and Maqbool, hospital sources said.

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