Pakistani volunteers search a badly damaged vehicle after a suicide bomb attack in Peshawar, yesterday. The bomber hit the vehicle belonging to Afghan scholar Haji Hayatullah in northwest Pakistan, killing three people, including the cleric’s guard and driver.
PESHAWAR: A suicide bomber yesterday hit a vehicle belonging to an Afghan Muslim scholar in northwest Pakistan, killing three people, including the cleric’s guard and driver, officials said.
The bomber detonated his explosive jacket close to Haji Hayatullah’s car as worshippers were leaving a mosque following Friday prayers in the congested Faqirabad neighbourhood, local police chief Liaquat Ali said.
“The bomber blasted Hayatullah’s car from the right side, killing the driver and the guard,” he said, adding that a third person succumbed to injuries in hospital and three others were wounded.
“It was a suicide attack, the target seems to be Hayatullah who had not boarded the vehicle,” he said. The bomber carried about 6kg of explosives, he said adding that the vehicle was badly damaged.
Hayatullah is nephew of Afghan scholar and jihadist commander Maulana Jamilur Rehman. Hayatullah, a Salafi cleric, who lives in Pakistan as refugee, was in the mosque when the bomber blew himself up, residents said.
As the car moved out of the parking area, the bomber detonated thinking that Hayatullah was in the vehicle, they said.
Rehman had participated in the 10-year Muslim resistance against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan which ended in 1989. Agencies
