KARACHI, Jan 24: Two blasts in a span of several minutes left four people, a DSP and an ASI among them, dead and 12 others, five of them policemen, injured in the Sherpao Colony of the city’s Landhi area on Thursday night.

According to police, a rather low-intensity bomb exploded in a garbage dump and when police officers, ambulance, rescue services’ personnel and local people gathered there to help the injured and investigate the incident, the second explosion took place and it caused most of the casualties.

The second blast destroyed three ambulances and damaged a police van.

Quaidabad DSP Kamal Khan Mangan and ASI Akbar Hussain died on the spot. The other two victims were identified as Fazal Khan, a private security guard, and passerby Saeedur Rehman.

“A private security guard Fazal Khan and a pedestrian Saeedur Rehman are also among the dead and 12 people have been brought to the JPMC with injuries,” Dr Seemin Jamali, In-charge of the Emergency and Accidents Ward of the JPMC, told Dawn.

Among the 12 injured, five were policemen, including the Quaidabad SHO and the others were staff of rescue services and a few passersby, she said.

DIG East Zone Aleem Jafri told Dawn that had the policemen not responded on time and cleared the site of the first explosion of hundreds of onlookers, the death toll could have been much higher.

He said that both bombs had been detonated by cell-phones, adding that around one kilogram of explosives had been used in the first blast and three kilograms, laced with ball-bearing and nails, in the second.

The bombs had been concealed in a cement block, the senior officer said.

CID SP, Counter Terrorism Unit, Raja Umar Khattab saw similarity between the Karachi blasts and Quetta’s bombings in terms of attracting policemen and rescue workers at the scene before detonating the second and more lethal bomb.

The bombs were laced with ball-bearings to make them more lethal, the SP said.

Since the Thursday’s night blast was on the outskirts of the city, far-off from media houses, journalists, cameramen and other TV channel staff did not reach there immediately, otherwise they also would have been among the victims, as was the case in two powerful bomb blasts in Quetta which left four media personnel dead, the police officer said.