Suspected suicide bombing near Iranian Consulate in Peshawar, two dead

A suspected suicide bombing killed at least one security personnel and wounded four others near the Iranian Consulate in this northwestern Pakistani city on Monday, a security source said.

Zee Media Bureau

Peshawar: A suspected suicide bombing killed at least two security personnel and wounded nine others near the Iranian Consulate in this northwestern Pakistani city on Monday, a security source said. As per news reports, the blast took place inside a suspicious vehicle which stopped near a security check post on University Road near the Iranian Consulate today. The University Town is a high-security zone of Peshawar, where the offices of several UN agencies and Consulates are located. The explosion was followed by intense firing. TV channels reported a suicide bomber was believed to have carried out the attack, a PTI report said. According to the initial reports, rescue workers said at least two Frontier Corps (FC) soldiers were killed during the blast while three others were injured. The injured people have been shifted to Khyber Teaching hospital where at least three of them were in critical condition. However, security officials are trying to find out the exact nature of the blast. Police have cordoned off the area and launched a search operation. Mast Gul, a former Hizbul Mujahideen commander who is now part of the banned Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, claimed the attack. His spokesman called up newspapers and news agencies in Peshawar to accept responsibility for the attack on the Iranian Consulate. "We will conduct similar attacks against Shias in the coming days," he said. Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Health Minister Shaukat Yousafzai told reporters that the Iranian Consulate was the apparent target of the attack. Mast Gul alias Haroon Khan, who was involved in the infamous siege of Charar-e-Sharief in 1995, had also claimed a suicide attack on a hotel in a Shia-dominated area of Peshawar that killed nine persons earlier this month. When the 47-year-old Gul surfaced to claim the earlier suicide attack, it was the first time he was seen in public in over a decade. Little was known of his whereabouts since he was injured in an ambush near Peshawar in August 2003. With PTI inputs