ISLAMABAD, June 3: The car used in the explosion near the Danish embassy on Monday was snatched from Jhang at gunpoint in February, sources close to the investigation told Dawn.

They said the white car was snatched from the limits of Mochiwala police station on Feb 18.

The sources said the car’s engine and chassis numbers were listed with the authority concerned in the federal capital and the man, in whose name the numbers were registered, had been picked up.

Two other men – an official of the Federal Investigation Agency who used to drive the car, and owner of the showroom that had rented the vehicle had also been picked up.

Forensic evidence proved that the engine and chassis numbers had been tampered with, adding that the original numbers were found to have been registered in Lahore.

An identikit of the suspect driving the vehicle at the time of the explosion was drawn with the help of security guards and police officials deployed at the edge of Street 19, the point through which vehicle had entered the area.

They said that the possibility that the sketch was ‘perfect’ was remote because the witnesses had only a glimpse of the suicide attacker.

The sources said experts differed vastly about the type of the explosive used in the blast. Some of them think it was TNT while others believe it to be RDX.

But they all concur that the explosive material was uniformly spread out in the car, including its trunk, bonnet and seats. A single device was used to trigger the explosive. No special mechanism, including wires or detonator, was found at the blast site.

Investigators had found some pieces of exploded mortars from the site sources said.

Sources said that the attacker had somehow made the car itself to shatter into small pieces acting as deadly shrapnel inside a radius of 500 to 700 metres.

Pieces of the car – one to 10 inches in diameter – were found from the crater made by the explosion. Five shopping bags were enough to collect the fragments. Only the engine and two shock absorber springs were found in their original shape.

The sources said that the shockwave of the blast had damaged more than 50 houses and 42 vehicles within a radius of 100 metres.