Death toll rises to 62; two suspects arrested

PESHAWAR: The death toll of a suicide attack at a mosque in Kocha Risaldar area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s capital has raised to 62 with five injured still in critical condition.

On Friday, 57 people, including a policeman, lost their lives, and 194 others were injured when a suicide attacker detonated himself inside the mosque located in Peshawar’s old city neighbourhood.

Meanwhile, the Special Investigation Team of the Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) has arrested two suspects in connection to the investigation of the previous day’s blast in the provincial capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. According to details, seven shells of 9MM pistol have been collected from the place of the incident while police have also recorded statements of the injured.

Spokesman of Lady Reading Hospital Peshawar Muhammad Asim said in a statement issued here on Saturday that 37 of those injured are admitted to the hospital, of whom five are in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) in critical condition.

CTD has filed a First Information Report (FIR) on the complaint of the Station House Officer (SHO) of the Khan Raziq police station. Section 7 of the Anti-Terrorism Act has been added in the case.

The blast tore through the Kocha Risaldar area of the city moments before Friday prayers were to start, shattering the interior and showering the streets with broken glass.

The SHO stated in the FIR that he rushed to the mosque after hearing sounds of gunshots and a loud explosion. The suicide attacker first opened indiscriminate fire after entering the mosque and then blew himself up, he said.

Meanwhile, Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa police and investigation agencies have identified all three suspects connected to the attack and closed in on them.

Prime Minister Imran Khan, in a tweet, said that the government had all information regarding the origins of where the terrorists came from and is going after them with full force.

The Prime Minister said that he has been personally monitoring operations and coordinating with Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) and other law-enforcement agencies in the wake of the cowardly terrorist attack on Peshawar Imambargah. Imran Khan further expressed his deepest condolences to the victims’ families and prayers for the recovery of the injured.

Later, the Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting while speaking at a new conference talked about Friday’s attack on an Imambargah in Peshawar and said considerable headway had been made into the investigation. He hoped that the culprits would be arrested in the next 48 hours or less.

Chaudhry said that while he wasn’t making any accusations since the investigation was still ongoing, “such events occur whenever international cricket is played in the country.”

“You saw that messages came from India to the Australian cricket team that they should go back. Yesterday, every tweet generated from India on the Peshawar incident had tagged the Australian cricket board.” He said the Indian government had made its people “hostage”. “We do not want such schemes to be used and we are ready to talk about peace and move forward,” Chaudhry added.

On other international topics, he rubbished the notion that relations with the West were deteriorating, saying that the Prime Minister would soon embark on a Europe tour and Pakistan believed in a balanced policy on the Russia-Ukraine conflict. He said Pakistan’s foreign policy was ‘100 percent’ being formulated inside the country and reflected the common man’s thinking.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022