Shafiullah Khan

Incident Description: Suicide attack

On June 17, 2011, a trainee reporter with daily The News, Peshawar, Shafiullah Khan, 28, succumbed to the injuries he received during two explosions that ripped through the military cantonment’s Khyber Supermarket in a commercial and residential area of Peshawar on June 11. Another journalist Asfandyar Abid Naveed was killed in the twin blasts. Naveed died on the spot. Seven other journalists sustained minor injuries.

Police investigators believed the first low intensity bomb was carried out as a trap to target first responders — mostly the police and journalists — who were expected to arrive at the site of the explosion. Khan had recently completed an MA in Journalism from Gomal University in Dera Ismail Khan and had joined the paper a week before the deadly attack happened.

Khan joined other journalists in rushing to the scene of the first low-intensity blast that took place in the toilet of a restaurant, just a few metres from the newspaper’s office, and fell victim to the subsequent attack, when the bomber who was on a motorbike detonated his suicide vest, causing a high number of casualties. Khan had received third degree burns and was transferred to the Khyber Teaching Hospital’s burn unit.

His elder brother Azizullah, who is an officer at the Higher Education Commission in Islamabad, shifted him to the Pakistan Ordnance Factories’ Hospital in Wah Cantonment, where a specialised burn care centre is located. Doctors said he also received metal shrapnel in his right shoulder.