Team News Riveting
A bomb attack by the Baloch militants destroyed the statue of Pakistan’s founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah in the coastal city of Gwadar in the restive Balochistan province.
The statue, which was installed in June at Marine Drive — considered a safe zone and a tourist destination– was blown up by explosives placed beneath the statue on Sunday morning. The statue was demolished in the blast, it added.
Babgar Baloch, a spokesman for the banned militant organisation Baloch Republican Army, claimed responsibility for the blast on Twitter, BBC Urdu reported.
The preliminary investigation suggested that the militants entered the area as tourists and planted the explosive. Gwadar Deputy Commissioner Major (retd) Abdul Kabir Khan said a high-level enquiry had been ordered into the incident.
“The demolition of Quaid-e-Azam’s statue in #Gwadar is an attack on Ideology of Pakistan. I request authorities to punish the perpetrators in the same way as we did with those behind the attack on Quaid-e-Azam residency in Ziarat,” Balochistan’s former Home Minister and current Senator Sarfraz Bugti tweeted.
In 2013, Baloch militants blasted a 121-year-old building used by Jinnah at Ziarat that was declared a national monument. Jinnah had stayed in the building in his last days of life after suffering from tuberculosis.
