On April 10th 1988, the twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad were bombarded with missiles, rockets, and all sorts of heavy ammunition.
People’s first reaction was that India had attacked, or perhaps it was the USSR; KGB had always been vociferously upset at Pakistan’s role in the Cold War in Afghanistan.
The truth was far from anyone of these intitial conspiracy theories, and were quickly put to rest as information was disseminated through the media by the government. There had been an accident, apparently a fire, at an arms depot in Faizabad, a village between Rawalpindi and Islamabad. The arms depot was commonly called, Ohjri Camp.
Unofficial casualty count was 1000 dead, 1000 injured, though the government tried to mull the figures by quoting only 100 civilians dead. The loss of life and property would have been much more had the ammaunition actually detonated, but luckily it didn’t. All the casualities were caused by mortar shell and missle hits at extremely high velocities.
One of the most common conspiracy theories of the explosion had to do with a US arms inspection team, on its way to Pakistan to check if any of the arms supplied by the US to Pakistan for the Afghan war were actually being used, or stocked for other purposes. Since this ammunition was in fact, not used in the war, but stocked, perhaps for sale to other countries, it had to be disposed of, and very quickly. So the government blew up the arms depot themselves in order to not get tagged by the US authorities, who, after this incident, did not really have to make their trip.
Officially, Zia ul Haq only mentioned sabotage as the reason for the Ohjri Camp disaster, and quoted ‘foreign hand’ in the incident.
A literally shell shocked population of Rawalpindi and Islamabad tried their best to help out in reducing the casualties, but it appeared that little could be done due to the sheer size and number of the launched arms.
Ohjri Camp was the most costly disaster incurred by Pakistan during the course of the Afghan war. To this day, the real causes have been shrouded in mystery. Prime Minister Junejo ordered an investigation into the disaster, but he was himself removed from office by Zia ul Haq, further causing confusion, and perhaps necessarily or unnecessarily tying the sacking to the investigation orders.
For the first few days, the camp was commonly mispronouced “Ujri” (meaning destroyed in Urdu).
DaPakiGuy… 