PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Feb 2 (Reuters) – The suicide bomber who killed more than 100 people at a mosque in a police compound in the Pakistani city of Peshawar this week wore a police uniform and entered the high-security area on a motorcycle, the provincial police chief said. Thursday.
The bomber behind Monday’s attack has been identified as a member of a militant network, Moazzam Jha Ansari, police chief of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, told reporters, without elaborating.
“I admit it was a security lapse. My people couldn’t stop it. It’s my fault,” Ansari said.
The bombing was the deadliest in a decade to hit Peshawar, a northwestern city that has suffered decades of Islamist militant violence and lies near the restive Pashtun tribal lands bordering Afghanistan.
It happened as hundreds of worshipers gathered for midday prayers at a mosque that was specially built for police and their families in the high-security Police Lines area.
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Ansari said CCTV footage showed the bomber, wearing a helmet and mask, riding his motorcycle through the main checkpoint on police lines. He then parked his bike, asked for directions to the mosque and walked there, Ansari added.
“The police guard at the main entrance mistook him for a member of the force; they didn’t check it,” Ansari said.
[1/9] A man walks through the rubble days after a suicide bombing at a mosque in Peshawar, Pakistan, February 2, 2023. REUTERS/Fayaz Aziz
A day earlier, the police chief said that investigators did not rule out that the attacker had “inside help”. Several suspects have been detained by police, he said.
All but three of those killed were policemen, making it the deadliest attack on Pakistani security forces in recent history.
Police Lines is a self-contained colonial-era camp that houses middle and low-ranking police officers and their families in the provincial capital. Hundreds of police officers staged demonstrations across the province to protest the attack.
The most active militant group in the region, the Pakistani Taliban, also called Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), has recently increased attacks on police in the northwestern province as part of its campaign against the government in Islamabad.
The TTP has denied responsibility for the mosque attack.
Pakistani officials say they suspect a splinter faction of the TTP called Jamat-ul-Ahrar is involved.
Jamaat-ul-Ahrar has claimed responsibility for several major attacks in the region over the years, including the twin suicide bombings at All Saints Church that killed dozens of worshipers in September 2013, which remains the deadliest attack on the country’s Christian minority.
Reporting by Jibran Ahmad in Peshawar and Asif Shahzad in Islamabad; Writing by Miral Fahmi; edit by
Our standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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