KARACHI: As twin blasts killed 25 people and left scores of others wounded on Friday, controversy and confusion hit the nature of the attacks, with police declaring it a suicide blast minutes after the first incident and later terming both the attacks a result of planted bombs.

Though high-ups intervened from Islamabad after more than six hours of the incident to declare both the attacks a result of planted bombs, headlines across the international media and officials at security institutions stuck to the fact as earlier shared by the bomb disposal unit of the police.

The incident emerged as a grim reminder of the Ashura blast that killed more than 40 participants of the main Muharram procession on M.A. Jinnah Road 40 days ago.

The police investigators initially disclosed that the blast was a suicide attack, but took nearly a week to arrive at a conclusion that it was planted in a box fixed on the pavement along the procession’s route.

“According to the facts gathered by us, there was a suicide jacket carrying around 15 to 20 kilograms of explosive,” Inspector Munir Ahmed Sheikh of the Bomb Disposal Unit (BDU) told reporters on the Shahrah-i-Quaideen flyover where a bus carrying mourners from Malir to the Chehlum procession came under attack.

There was no official word from the authorities denying the initial assessment of the BDU for a couple of hours. However, the authorities started claiming that it was a little too early to determine the nature of the blast soon after the second blast ripped through the front portion of the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre’s emergency ward where the blast victims had been brought for treatment.

Finally the recovery of a bomb concealed in a monitor at the hospital convinced the authorities that the two previous attacks were caused by planted explosive devices.

“The scenes of two blasts don’t show any sign of suicide attack,” Capital City Police Officer Waseem Ahmed told Dawn.

“Both bombs were planted. They were locally made with nuts and bolts to make the impact severe. Their make resembles with the bomb that was used in the Ashura procession blast.”

However, there was no official word available to know the reasons behind contradicting claims and assessments of the investigators that finally forced Federal Interior Minister Rahman Malik to declare that the attacks were caused by planted bombs.

Unlike their response to the Ashura procession blast when the police sought help of bomb disposal experts from the NWFP, the authorities appeared confident this time to investigate the case on their own.

They suspect the same people behind both the attacks. “There are similarities between the Ashura blast and the latest two,” the CCPO said.

“We were quite successful to secure the main procession that left the attackers helpless and they targeted the bus at an isolated place.”

Last month, the police claimed to have arrested four men for their suspected involvement in the Ashura procession blast and the two low-intensity blasts that occurred on the eighth and ninth of Muharram.

The police said the four arrested suspects allegedly were associated with a terrorist group, Jundullah, which had carried out several attacks, including the one on the corps commander motorcade and the other on Gulistan-i-Jauhar police station, in the city in the past.