Death Toll Rises To 100 As Suicide Bomber Attack Policemen In Peshawar

Officials of Pakistan ended rescue efforts on Tuesday evening for more possible survivors and retrieving of dead bodies from the rubbles of suicide bomb attack inside Police Headquarters in Peshawar on Monday.

The numbers of death persons mostly policemen rise to 100 at the end of the rescue efforts on Tuesday.

Police authority said thesuicide blast at a mosque inside a Pakistan police headquarters was a targeted revenge attack.

Interior minister Rana Sanaullah said before Pakistan’s national assembly that the dead victims included 97 police officers and three civilians, with 27 patients still in critical condition.

It was gathered that authorities in Pakistan are investigating how a major security breach could happen in one of the most tightly controlled areas of the city, housing intelligence and counter-terrorism bureaus, and next door to the regional secretariat.

Meanwhile, the Pakistani-Taliban militants, separate from the Afghan-Taliban militants, but with a similar Islamist ideology, denied responsibility for the suicide bomb blast.

The Pakistan-Taliban militants known as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, the group carried out years-long wave of horrific violence after emerging in 2007, but recently has attempted to rebrand itself as a less brutal outfit, claiming not to target places of worship.

According to International News Agency, a security official in Peshawar, who asked not to be named, said Tuesday that authorities were considering all possibilities, including the involvement of a TTP splinter faction, the Islamic State group or a coordinated attack by several groups.

“Often in the past militant groups, including the TTP, that carry out attacks in mosques do not claim them” because a mosque is considered a sacred place, the official told AFP.

It would be recalled that between 300 and 400 policemen had gathered for afternoon prayers at the compound’s mosque on Monday in the provincial capital Peshawar when an entire wall and most of the roof were blown out, showering rubble on officers.

“We are on the frontline taking action against militants and that is why we were targeted,” city police chief Muhammad Ijaz Khan told AFP.

“The purpose was to demoralize us as a force.”

Wajahat Ali, a 23-year-old police constable whose feet were broken in the blast, told AFP from hospital that he had “remained trapped under the rubble with a dead body over me for seven hours. I had lost all hope of survival.”

Shahid Ali, another survivor, said the explosion took place seconds after the Imam started prayers.

Reports indicated that low-level militancy, often targeting security checkpoints, has been steadily rising in the areas near Peshawar that border Afghanistan since the Taliban seized control of Kabul in August 2021.

The assaults are claimed mostly by the Pakistani Taliban, as well as the local chapter of the Islamic State, but mass casualty attacks remain rare.

The head of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province police force, Moazzam Jah Ansari, told reporters that a suicide bomber had entered the mosque as a guest, carrying 10-12 kilograms (about 22-26 pounds) of “explosive material in bits and pieces.”

“I saw black smoke rising to the sky. I ran out to save my life,” the 47-year-old police officer told AFP.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif had said “terrorists want to create fear by targeting those who perform the duty of defending Pakistan”.

Videos and photographs from the scenes after the blast showed people coming out of the rubble on their own and looking for rescue services.