KARACHI: Al-Azhar Garden and surrounding residential buildings in Safoora Goth give a serene view. Almost all the residents there hail from the Ismaili community and to facilitate their travel within the city there are various shuttle services.
On Wednesday morning, one such shuttle bus of Al-Azhar Garden, carrying around 60 passengers, was attacked soon after it left the residential area when six armed assailants stopped it, got on it and opened fire killing the driver and dozens of others, while leaving many wounded.
“We were the first ones to reach the scene. We got there in less than five minutes. What we saw there cannot be described easily in words. Had we not heard the cries of pain, we would have thought that everyone was dead. We found Sultan, the bus conductor, too, hiding and playing dead under a seat. Realising that the killers had left he came out and we helped him remove the lifeless form of the driver from his seat as he got into his place and drove full speed into the nearest hospital,” said Nasruddin, a resident of the area.
One of the victims was also named Sultan. Full name: Sultan Nur Mohammad. “He was my uncle,” said Salman Abdul, another area resident who was also one of the young men who reached the bus before everyone else to help. “My cousin, Shameer, needed his CNIC made and was about to board the shuttle to get dropped near the Nadra office when his father got his documents to go there instead of him citing that being a senior citizen would help him in hurrying up the process. The gunmen’s bullets killed him instantly,” the nephew said.
Ismailimail 