Pak mosque suicide bomber was in police uniform

 

A police chief in Pakistan said on Thursday that the attacker who killed 101 people inside a mosque was wearing a uniform and a helmet when he carried out the attack.

A police chief said on Thursday that a suicide bomber who killed 101 people inside a mosque at a police headquarters in Pakistan was wearing a uniform and a helmet when he struck.

Hundreds of policemen were attending afternoon prayers in the northwestern city of Peshawar on Monday when an explosion rocked a wall and crushed officers.

Moazzam Jah Ansari, the chief of the police force of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, said at a press conference, "The people on duty did not check him because he was in police uniform... It was a lapse in security."

Police have a "reasonable idea" about who the bomber was after matching his head with CCTV images.

"There is a whole network behind him," Ansari said, explaining that the attacker did not plan the attack alone.

Officials are probing how a major breach could have happened in one of the most sensitive areas of the city, which houses the intelligence and counter-terrorism bureaus and is next to the regional secretariat.

It is Pakistan's deadliest attack in years and the worst since violence in the region began following the Afghan Taliban takeover of Kabul in 2021.

Authorities are also probing the possibility that people inside the compound helped coordinate the attack, a senior city police officer told AFP on condition of anonymity on Wednesday.

"We have detained people from the police line (headquarters) to get to the bottom of how the explosive material arrived and to see if any police officers were also involved in the attack," he told AFP.

The police official said at least 23 people were detained, including some from the former tribal areas that border Afghanistan.

The attack has left a scarred city on edge, reminiscent of more than a decade ago when Peshawar was at the center of an insurgency waged by the Pakistani Taliban (TTP), before an evacuation drive forced them into the mountainous border and into Afghanistan. drained off.

Analysts say militants have been emboldened by the withdrawal of US and NATO troops from Afghanistan and the Taliban's push into Kabul, which Islamabad accuses of failing to secure its borders.

Security forces have since become the target of an increase in low-level attacks, often at checkpoints.

Attacks are mostly claimed by the TTP as well as local chapters of the Islamic State, but attacks resulting in mass casualties are rare.

The TTP has distanced itself from the Peshawar mosque blast, saying it will no longer attack places of worship.