By Munawer Azeem | From the Newspaper
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ISLAMABAD, July 11: A mysterious blast in a Pakistan Army ammunition store on the outskirts of Islamabad on Monday morning killed one soldier and injured three others.
A crisp, two-sentence statement by the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) said it was “an accidental blast in a unit ammunition store near Sihala”, and that the injured were evacuated to the Combined Military Hospital in Rawalpindi.
It did not give out the cause of the blast or the condition of the injured.
Army troops cordoned off the site soon after the blast around 10:30am some distance away from Kahuta Road.
Police also were barred from the blast site like the media.
The policemen told the restive journalists that they had orders not to make any information public.
“An inquiry is being conducted by the army to ascertain the cause of the blast but we have been told to keep our lips sealed,” said a police officer. But he thought that “the incident probably happened during maintenance of the weapons”.Troops manning the cordon prevented media personnel from collecting information independently. The few television cameramen who climbed up a mound to try to film the blast site from long range were dragged down by a soldier.
According to people living in the vicinity and other sources, there existed four arms dumps at the site, one of which appeared to have been destroyed.
Claims by them that rockets, mortars and hand grenades were stored in them could not be verified.
Newspaper reporters and television teams who converged at the scene shortly after the blast were fed speculation more than any hard news.
“A bullet went off accidentally at the site and hit the power supply line causing short circuit at the arms store. The resulting fire ignited the explosives stored there,” announced the reporter of a private television channel, only to leave his audience guessing.
But a retired army captain pointed out that short circuit caused by high voltage electricity alone can ignite a fire. “And the few bulbs an arms store has don`t need high voltage electricity to light up.”
Then the army is a disciplined force, trained how to handle weapons and explosives.
Finally the reporter declared: “It is not a terrorist attack.” His information played down, another tweet came claiming that the explosion was caused by “mishandling of weapons”. Later the version changed to “mishandling of explosives”.Still later the reporters of an Urdu-language newspaper and a TV channel heard that the victims of the incident were loading weapons and explosive in a truck when a crate of hand grenades fell and sent the whole dump up in smoke.
Some informants quoted “insiders at the armoury” that it all happened during a mock firefighting exercise at the armoury which went awry.
Others reported “trespassers” were responsible for the incident.
An auto-mobile mechanic doing business on Kahuta Road said:
“I heard a large explosion and shortly afterwards saw soldiers rushing to the site. Later army vehicles and ambulances reached the spot.”
A labourer, closing the subject, said: “We have no idea what happened in the arms depot.”
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