Comments

You have commented 339 times on Rantburg.

Your Name

Your e-mail (optional)

Website (optional)

	My Original Nic Pic-a-Nic Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Foto

Submit your comments on this article

India-Pakistan

‘Mastermind, handler’ of Peshawar mosque attack traced; TTP faction involved in blast: KP police

2023-03-18

[Dawn] The Additional Inspector General of Police in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Shaukat Abbas, said on Friday that the Counter Terrorism Department has apprehended a key suspect linked to the Beautiful Downtown Peshawar

...capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, administrative and economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Peshawar is situated near the eastern end of the Khyber Pass, convenient to the Pak-Afghan border. Peshawar has evolved into one of Pakistain's most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities, which means lots of gunfire...
mosque bombing that killed dozens in January as he attributed the attack to a splinter faction of the proscribed Tehrik-e-Taliban
...the Pashtun equivalent of men...
Pakistain (TTP).

On Jan 30, a powerful explosion destroyed a mosque in Peshawar’s Red Zone area where between 300 and 400 people — mostly coppers — had gathered for prayers. The suicide kaboom

blew away the wall of the prayer hall and an inner roof and claimed 84 lives.

The outlawed TTP had initially grabbed credit for the attack. However,
it's easy to be generous with someone else's money...
it later distanced itself from it but sources earlier indicated that it might have been the handiwork of some local faction of the outlawed group.

Addressing a presser today, the senior KP police official asserted that the TTP’s group Jamaat-ul-Ahrar was behind the incident.

I seem to recall that they originally claimed it...

"The bomber who carried out the attack is known as ’Qari’ in the TTP circles," the official added.

He said that the suspect detained by law enforcement officials was a "backup jacket wallah" who would have been used as a secondary option during the attack in case the first bomber failed to detonate his vest.

The suspect was identified as Imtiaz Khan and was arrested by the CTD with the help of law enforcement agencies, according to the additional IG.

The bigwig declined to identify the place from where the suspect was arrested. However,
it's easy to be generous with someone else's money...
he reiterated that the alleged bomber got training in the Kunduz area of Afghanistan.

Furthermore, he mentioned that law enforcement had identified a "criminal mastermind" and a "handler" associated with the bombers, and they were currently making efforts to apprehend them.

The criminal mastermind was identified as Ghaffar alias Salman. "We have found that Ghaffar was in contact with the suicide bomber on the day of the incident. We are trying to apprehend the handler and criminal mastermind of the attack."

Pakistain has witnessed a surge in TTP violence since peace talks between the murderous Moslem group and the government broke down in the latter half of last year. The TTP formally ended the ceasefire on November 28 and since then 58 attacks have been claimed by the group in which 170 people died.

Many of these attacks were planned and directed by the TTP leadership based in Afghanistan, according to a Dawn report.

Posted by:trailing wife

00:00