A high-profile Pakistani journalist and television anchor escaped an assassination bid on Monday when police defused a bomb planted under his car in Islamabad.
The device in a metal box was found stuck under the front passenger seat of Hamid Mir’s car, city police chief Bani Amin said.
Narrow escape: Hamid Mir was on his way to his office and the bomb was planted when he stopped at a market. File Pic/Getty Images
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Mir, who hosts the Capital Talk evening show on Geo television and writes a column for the biggest-selling newspaper Jang, was criticised by the Taliban last month in the wake of the shooting of Malala Yousafzai.
“It was in a tin box, there was half a kilo of explosives fitted with detonator,” Amin said. He said officers have defused the bomb and are gathering evidence.
Mir was on his way to his office and the bomb was apparently planted when he stopped at a market, said Geo’s Islamabad bureau chief Rana Jawad. “It’s a message to me as well as Geo and the journalist community in Pakistan,” Mir told the television channel.
“They want to stop us from speaking the truth but I want to tell them that we will not be deterred.”
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