Pakistan Police said Thursday that the suicide bomber who blew himself up inside a mosque in the northern city of Peshawar on Monday was dressed in «a police uniform», while assuring that progress has been made in the investigations into the attack, which left more than 100 dead and around 200 wounded.
The attack was perpetrated in a mosque in Police Lines where between 300 and 400 people were participating in a prayer, most of them policemen. Although the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) group, known as the Pakistani Taliban, claimed responsibility for the attack, it later distanced itself from the attack.
Jiber Pakhtunkhwa province police chief Moazam Ja Ansari said security cameras captured the moment the suicide bomber passed through security checkpoints. «He was dressed in a police uniform and was wearing a mask and helmet,» he said, as reported by the Pakistani newspaper ‘Dawn’.
He also stressed that among the debris of the mosque, whose roof partially collapsed due to the power of the explosion, metal bearings used as shrapnel were found, and confirmed that the severed head found at the site is that of the suicide bomber, who for the moment has not been identified.
Ansari said that the attacker spoke to an officer who was in the area to ask where the mosque was and explained that «this implies that he did not know the area.» «He was given a target, so there is a network behind him. He is not a lone wolf,» he has pointed out, while asking for «patience» while investigations progress.
On the other hand, he specified that between ten and twelve kilograms of trinitrotoluene (TNT) were used in the attack and added that the mosque, which was 50 years old, «had no pillars». «When the bomb exploded, the walls and roof collapsed. People were trapped for hours under the rubble,» he lamented.
Ansari stressed that the police «will take revenge on each and every martyr» and denounced the spread of «conspiracy theories» to «incite» the officers to take to the streets to protest, after the police demonstration recorded on Wednesday in Jiber Pakhtunkhua, the first of its kind in the Central Asian country.
For her part, Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mumtaz Zahra Baloch has called on the Afghan Taliban to cooperate in the investigation, in view of the possible responsibility of the TTP armed group. «Terrorism is a common threat to Pakistan and Afghanistan. We expect the Afghan internal government to fulfill its promises to the international community,» he said.
Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Jan Mutaqi said Wednesday that Islamabad should not accuse others of the attack. «We ask Pakistani ministers not to throw snow on their own roof or the roofs of others. They should consider the problems of their country. We recommend them to analyze the Peshawar blast very closely,» he said, according to Afghan television network Tolo TV.
Pakistani security forces have in recent weeks stepped up their operations against the TTP after the armed group announced in late November the end of a ceasefire agreed with Pakistani authorities amid contacts being brokered by the Afghan Taliban following their seizure of power in Afghanistan in August 2021.
The TTP group, which differs from the Afghan Taliban in organizational matters but follows the same rigorist interpretation of Sunni Islam, brings together more than a dozen Islamist militant groups operating in Pakistan, where they have killed some 70,000 people in two decades of violence.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
