According to police sources, the 14-coach train was chugging towards Panipat when the explosions occurred just past midnight and set off a huge fire in two of the crowded compartments. Most of the 68 victims were caught asleep in the inferno. The train with other passengers resumed its journey after five coaches, including the two charred ones were detached. Ten Pakistanis were admitted with severe burns at Delhi's Safdarjung Hospital.
Pakistani officials said the passengers who were able to escape appeared to have broken through the sole emergency exit window in each of the affected coaches. The exit doors are routinely locked up on this train which runs point to point between the Old Delhi station and the Indian border post of Attari, on the Indo-Pakistan border, not stopping at any other station for security reasons.
I haven't written much about homistan lately. Mainly because the news has been unceasingly depressing. Bomb blasts in Islamabad, Quetta, Waziristan. Killings.
A man shot dead a Pakistani provincial government minister on Tuesday as she was about to give a speech at a political party meeting, a minister said.
Zil-e-Huma, social welfare minister of the Punjab government, was an active member of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League that supports President Pervez Musharraf.
The man who shot Zil-e Huma Usman, Ghulam Sarwar, was arrested last year for killing 12 call girls from Lahore, but was released from jail soon after. The mind fails to make sense.
NYT reported that al-Qaeda is solidifying in Waziristan. An ex-CIA head was on MSNBC predicting that the next attack on US will be planned and executed from Pakistan.
The train - detaching the deadly charred cabins - continued its journey. It was certainly not the first train that rolled into Wagah carrying the stench of death but I cannot stop thinking about the passengers who continued on. How does one continue to ride? How do you decide to finish that journey?
Madrid. London. Bombay. Panipat. The trains filled with victims stretching across those civilizational chasms will have to keep running.
Yun hi hamesha khilay-e hain hum ne aag mein phool/Na unki haar nai hai, na apni jeet nai.
How is one supposed to keep up with news from homistan and live one's life at the same time? That's why I only do one at a time.
Too early to say who did it, but the Indian claims of this being the work of Lashkar-e-Taiba or the Jaish-e-Muhammad aren't as over the top as some of our compatriots are making them out to be on some blogs... Our jihad chickens are finally here to roost... its time we laid the blame squarely on the shoulders of those responsible for this big mess: the faujis...
Exactly how much of Pakistan do you think that Al Qaeda and the Taliban going to wind up controlling when this nonsense is all done?
Well, with the faujis in charge, they can go about occupying libraries in G-6, Islamabad, which is about a kilometer or so away from the Presidency, the Parliament, the Supreme Court... they are also free to shoot ruling party ministers in ruling party meetings... you can get the picture about the rest of Pakistan and the rest of us... the likelihood of their actually taking over Pakistan remains minuscule, but like someone said in an editorial recently, they try to get an inch, the generals give them a few miles, so in the long run, who knows... Like I said earlier, its time we laid the blame squarely on the shoulders of those responsible for this big mess: the faujis...