PESHAWAR, Pakistan, February 1 (Portal) – Police investigating a suicide bombing that killed more than 100 people at a Pakistani mosque said on Tuesday several people had been arrested and they could not rule out the possibility that the assassin escaped internal help from security checks.
The bombing was the deadliest in a decade to hit Peshawar, a troubled northwestern town near the Afghan border, and all but three of those killed were police officers, leaving Pakistani security forces the most in a single attack in recent history suffered from it.
The bomber struck Monday as hundreds of worshipers gathered for midday prayers at a mosque specially built for police and their families living in a heavily fortified area.
“We found some excellent leads and made some major arrests based on those leads,” Peshawar Police Chief Ijaz Khan told Portal.
“We cannot rule out internal support, but as the investigation is ongoing I cannot share any further details.”
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Investigators, which include counter-terrorism and intelligence officials, are focusing on how the attacker managed to breach the military and police checkpoints that led into the Police Lines district, an independent colonial-era camp in the city center where the center is located – and junior police personnel and their families.
[1/6] Rescue workers clear the rubble as they search for victims, following a suicide bombing attack at a mosque in Peshawar, Pakistan January 31, 2023. Portal/Fayaz Aziz
Defense Minister Khawaja Asif said the bomber was in the front row of the prayer hall when it struck. The remains of the attacker have been recovered, provincial police chief Moazzam Jah Ansari told Portal.
“We believe the attackers are not an organized group,” he added.
The most active militant group in the region, the Pakistani Taliban, also known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), has denied responsibility for the attack, which no group has so far claimed. Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah told parliament that a breakaway faction of the TTP was to blame.
The explosion destroyed the upper floor of the mosque. It was the deadliest in Peshawar since two suicide bombings at All Saints Church in September 2013 that killed scores of worshipers in September 2013, and remains the deadliest attack on the country’s Christian minority.
Peshawar is on the edge of Pashtun tribal territory, a region marked by violence for two decades.
The TTP is an umbrella organization for Sunni and sectarian Islamist factions opposed to the government in Islamabad. The group has recently stepped up attacks on the police.
Reporting by Jibran Ahmad in Peshawar and Asif Shahzad in Islamabad; writing from Miral Fahmy; Edited by Simon Cameron Moore
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