Police additionally mentioned they killed three suspects allegedly concerned in final week’s bombing in Peshawar that killed 64 individuals.
An ISIL (ISIS) suicide bomber who killed 64 individuals at a Shia mosque in northwest Pakistan final week was an Afghan exile who returned house to coach for the assault, police say.
Two senior Pakistan police officers mentioned the suicide bomber liable for Friday’s Peshawar blast had ready the assault in Afghanistan, an AFP information company report mentioned on Wednesday.
The officers mentioned the attacker was an Afghan nationwide in his 30s who moved to Pakistan together with his household a long time in the past.
“The bomber went [back] to Afghanistan, skilled there and returned with out informing his household,” one of many senior police officers, who didn’t need to reveal his id, advised AFP.
Pakistani police on Wednesday additionally mentioned they killed three suspected attackers allegedly concerned within the bombing on the mosque in Peshawar, the capital of northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
Peshawar police chief Ijaz Khan advised reporters the suspects, together with the “important handler”, had been killed in a safety operation close to Khyber tribal district, the gateway to neighbouring Afghanistan.
The handler, Khan claimed, was concerned in guiding the suspected suicide bomber who blew himself up in the midst of worshippers throughout Friday prayers on the mosque within the historic Kissa Khuwani Bazaar.
The bombing adopted a string of comparable assaults in war-torn Afghanistan, whose border lies about an hour from the place a number of Shia mosques had been focused after the Taliban took management of the nation final August following the hasty withdrawal of the United States-led forces.
Since then, there have been warnings Afghanistan may grow to be a recruiting floor and staging put up for armed fighters, although the Taliban has pledged it won’t permit Afghan soil for use to plot assaults on different nations.
Nonetheless, final month, the United Nations Safety Council mentioned “terrorist teams get pleasure from higher freedom there than at any time in latest historical past”.
ISIL (ISIS) additionally claimed accountability for what it mentioned was a suicide blast on Tuesday that killed seven paramilitary troops close to a web site in southwestern Pakistan the place the president had visited lower than half an hour earlier.
Muhammad Amir Rana, director of the Pakistan Institute for Peace Research, mentioned there was “plenty of apprehension” within the worldwide group over the prospect of Afghanistan turning into a haven for armed teams.
“There are plenty of questions on the Taliban’s capacity to control Afghanistan,” mentioned Rana.
Because the Taliban’s return to energy in Afghanistan, Pakistan has acted as a key dealer between the group and the worldwide group.
Pakistan was one among simply three nations to formally recognise the Taliban’s first authorities from 1996 to 2001.