Unearthed entire network, kin of bombers behind Pak blast: Sleuths

Peshawar: Pakistani investigation authorities on Sunday claimed to have uneartherd the entire network and family members of the bombers responsible for the deadly suicide attack on a crowded Shia mosque in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provice that killed 63 people and wounded 200 others, a senior official said.

A suicide bomber, belonging to the ISIS-Khorasan, blew himself up inside a mosque in Qissa Khwani bazaar in Peshawar, capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province on Friday, in one of the deadliest attacks in the restive region, bordering Afghanistan. Advisor to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister on Information Barrister Muhammad Ali Saif along with Peshawar City Police Chief Ijaz Khan told reporters that a rickshaw driver and facilitator have been traced while the police investigators are very close to family of the bombers as their identification process has been completed.

The development came a day after Pakistan’s Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed vowed to arrest the masterminds behind the deadly suicide attack. FIR has been registered against the unknown accused in Khan Raziq Police Station and forwarded to Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) police probing the blast.

It is said that CTD has arrested two suspects in the case and collected the required data from the site. According to the investigation team, they have found seven bullet shells and maintained that bomber used a 9 mm pistol before blowing himself. The sketches of the bombers and two facilitators who have come on Tri wheeler at the blast site have been completed.

The city police chief Ijaz khan did not agree to the assertions of the people that police security guards did not play their role properly. However, he agreed there may be some lapses as polio drives and festivals of minority communities were also underway in the city.

The police were fully alert. The Peshawar city police chief said they had information about presence of two terrorists in the city. He further said that seven dead bodies could not be identified while police also found two broken legs which is believed to be of the bombers and has been sent to the forensic for DNA investigation.

The last major terrorist attack was also carried out in Peshawar a mosque in Dir Colony on Oct 27, 2020, killing eight students and injuring around 120 injured as a timed device went off on the premises, where a large number of seminarians were attending a class. —PTI