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Two leaders of the group, often called the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP, claimed duty for the assault on Twitter. Umar Mukarram Khorasani, a member of the TTP central management council, tweeted that it was “the fourth suicide assault” to avenge the demise of senior TTP chief Umar Khalid Khorasani, a founding father of the group who was killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan final August. He warned that extra such revenge assaults would observe.
Nevertheless, in a tweeted assertion issued late Monday, Muhammad Khorasani, a spokesman for the TTP, denied any involvement within the bombing. “I want to make it clear Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan has no function within the Peshawar incident,” the assertion mentioned. “Attacking mosques, seminaries, funerals and different sacred locations is in opposition to our outlined guidelines and ideas and is a punishable act.”
The highly effective blast and the uncommon infiltration of a suicide bomber right into a secured army compound elevated issues that the collapse of the truce in November, which had been assisted by Afghan Taliban leaders in Kabul, would unleash a wave of additional assaults on army targets. The mosque was surrounded by excessive partitions and situated inside a high-security authorities zone with many civilian and safety workplaces. Greater than 300 worshipers have been inside on the time.
In a tweet late Monday, the Taliban international ministry in Kabul denounced the bombing and expressed condolences for the victims. It mentioned the Afghan authorities “condemns assaults on worshippers in mosques,” which “contradict the teachings” of Islam.
The TTP espouses a strict imaginative and prescient of Sunni Islam, just like that of the Afghan Taliban. The group has displayed indicators of extra aggressive and impressive habits for the reason that Afghan Taliban returned to energy in August 2021. The TTP has lengthy been based mostly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which borders Afghanistan and has been a haven for Islamist militants from each international locations. Peshawar is the provincial capital.
“The sheer scale of the human tragedy is unimaginable. That is a minimum of an assault on Pakistan,” Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif tweeted Monday night after coming back from Peshawar, the place he and Gen. Asim Munir, the nation’s new military chief, flew after the blast. Each males visited victims there at Woman Studying Hospital, the place some victims have been reported to be in essential situation.
“The nation is overwhelmed by a deep sense of grief,” Sharif mentioned. “I’ve little question terrorism is our foremost nationwide safety problem.” He mentioned the federal government would undertake a “complete technique” to counter the deteriorating safety scenario within the northwest, and burdened that the attackers “don’t have anything to do with Islam” however quite search to “create concern” by focusing on the nation’s protection forces. Pakistan is an Islamic republic, and greater than 90 % of its residents are Muslim, although it additionally has a large Christian minority.
The assault instantly evoked a earlier assault by TTP gunmen on the Military Public Faculty in Peshawar in December 2014. The assault, reportedly masterminded by Umar Khalid Khorasani, left 149 folks useless, most of them younger college students. In response, Pakistani safety forces unleashed a nationwide anti-terrorist crackdown. Officers lifted a moratorium on the demise penalty and executed a lot of captured militants.
Police instructed journalists that many worshipers Monday have been trapped and injured after the mosque roof collapsed on them and that rescuers had labored for hours to take away rubble in a frantic try to succeed in them. One police official mentioned the attacker had blown himself up whereas pretending to wish with the opposite worshipers.
The assault got here as Pakistan has been grappling with a lot of different challenges, together with widespread floods that left huge agricultural areas of the nation in muddy ruins, and a dire financial and monetary disaster that has led to spiraling inflation; heavy international money owed which have introduced the federal government dangerously near default; and a pointy devaluation of the nationwide forex.
In recent times, home militant violence — as soon as a nationwide scourge that killed 1000’s of civilians and safety forces — had waned significantly after repeated army offensives within the rugged tribal areas bordering Afghanistan. The TTP, which as soon as carried out a whole lot of assaults, had been weakened, with its leaders killed and its sanctuaries overrun.
However the space has remained weak to militant actions on each side, and the Taliban’s return to energy in Afghanistan has additional difficult issues. Pakistan first accused Kabul of providing sanctuary to the TTP, however Taliban leaders denied this and as an alternative inspired the now-failed peace talks.
“Pakistan was hopeful it may attain a peace deal after the Taliban took management of Kabul, however the scenario grew to become worse as an alternative,” Ashraf Ali, a safety analyst in Pakistan, instructed The Washington Put up late Monday. “The safety scenario has turn into a critical problem to the federal government.”
Ali mentioned that the Pakistani militants had been impressed by the Taliban takeover in Kabul to attempt gaining management over the border areas inside Pakistan. The peace talks, he mentioned, basically backfired by giving the TTP an opportunity to reorganize and purchase new weapons, which Pakistani safety forces within the areas didn’t have. Now, he mentioned, he fears the current “surge in militant assaults” will proceed.
Shaiq Hussain in Islamabad, Pakistan, and Pamela Constable in Kabul contributed to this report.
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