‘Toilet gas’ blast damages Pakistan police station

PESHAWAR—A seemingly accidental blast that Pakistani police blamed on “toilet gases” damaged a police station in the city of Peshawar on Monday, injuring at least five people.

A police official initially said the blast occurred in a room used to store ammunition in the station in the middle-class neighborhood of Gulbahar in the main city in Pakistan’s Taliban-infested northwest.

But the Peshawar police chief later told incredulous reporters on television that dodgy sewers were responsible for the collapse of one room and the partial damage of two others.

Television footage showed civilians and policemen carrying injured people out on stretchers and ambulances rushing to the scene.

Northwestern Pakistan is frequently hit by bomb attacks blamed on Islamist militants opposed to the government’s alliance with the United States that have killed more than 4,200 people across the country since July 2007.

But Peshawar city police chief Liaqat Ali blamed Monday’s blast on “gases in the toilets”.

Asked if gases could be strong enough to demolish two rooms of a police station, he insisted: “It happens in many cases.”

Local administration official Muhammad Siraj Khan told AFP that a natural gas leak in the sewers within the police station caused the blast.

“The blast triggered a fire in a nearby room which had electricity controls,” he said.

“Five people, including four policemen and one prisoner, were injured,” he added.

Pakistan’s military has fought for years against the Taliban and other Islamist militants in the northwest, claiming on Saturday to have “broken the back” of the militant threat despite US criticism to the contrary.

The United States considers the tribal belt, which runs into Peshawar, the global headquarters of Al-Qaeda and the most dangerous place on Earth.