LAHORE: The fact that Faisalabad has been an extremely safe city can be gauged from the verity that out of the 105 terrorism and violence-related incidents that have shaken the province of Punjab between 2001 and March 8, 2011, only three such events have occurred within the geographic boundaries of this third largest Pakistani urban centre.
Faisalabad has otherwise been deemed an exceptionally secure city in Pakistan over the years, despite the fact that this industrial town is situated just 70 kilometres from Jhang, a town where banned religious outfit Sipah-e-Sahaba and its much-feared splinter faction Lashkar-e-Jhangvi were established.
A peek into the chronology of terrorism in Faisalabad shows that Tuesday’s car bomb explosion near the ISI offices stands out to be the deadliest of all the three terror-related incidents that have disturbed this globally-acknowledged textile hub’s calm and tranquility since the last decade.
While two people were injured when a masked terrorist had opened indiscriminate fire on a mosque in Faislabad’s Gulistan Colony on March 10, 2003, unidentified militants had killed two Pakistani Christian brothers accused of blasphemy at a court here on July 19, 2010.
Apart from these two afore-mentioned unfortunate incidents of March 2003 and July 2010, and before yesterday’s lethal explosion, not a stone had ever been pelted within the precincts of this city since the days of its founder and Punjab’s Lieutenant Governor Sir Charles James Lyall (1845-1920).
Before it was renamed after Saudi Arabia’s King Faisal in 1977, Faisalabad was originally known as Lyallpur, being named after Governor Lyall. Governor Lyall was the great grandfather of Mark Lyall Grant, a former British High Commissioner to Pakistan and currently the President of the United Nations Security Council.
A PricewaterhouseCoopers study released in 2009, surveying the 2008 GDP of the top cities in the world, had calculated Faisalabad’s PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) at $14 billion, just third behind Karachi ($78 billion) and Lahore ($40 billion). The News
Faisalabad has otherwise been deemed an exceptionally secure city in Pakistan over the years, despite the fact that this industrial town is situated just 70 kilometres from Jhang, a town where banned religious outfit Sipah-e-Sahaba and its much-feared splinter faction Lashkar-e-Jhangvi were established.
A peek into the chronology of terrorism in Faisalabad shows that Tuesday’s car bomb explosion near the ISI offices stands out to be the deadliest of all the three terror-related incidents that have disturbed this globally-acknowledged textile hub’s calm and tranquility since the last decade.
While two people were injured when a masked terrorist had opened indiscriminate fire on a mosque in Faislabad’s Gulistan Colony on March 10, 2003, unidentified militants had killed two Pakistani Christian brothers accused of blasphemy at a court here on July 19, 2010.
Apart from these two afore-mentioned unfortunate incidents of March 2003 and July 2010, and before yesterday’s lethal explosion, not a stone had ever been pelted within the precincts of this city since the days of its founder and Punjab’s Lieutenant Governor Sir Charles James Lyall (1845-1920).
Before it was renamed after Saudi Arabia’s King Faisal in 1977, Faisalabad was originally known as Lyallpur, being named after Governor Lyall. Governor Lyall was the great grandfather of Mark Lyall Grant, a former British High Commissioner to Pakistan and currently the President of the United Nations Security Council.
A PricewaterhouseCoopers study released in 2009, surveying the 2008 GDP of the top cities in the world, had calculated Faisalabad’s PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) at $14 billion, just third behind Karachi ($78 billion) and Lahore ($40 billion). The News
