Suicide bombing kills at least 54 people at political rally in Pakistan – National | 24CA News
The loss of life toll from an enormous suicide bombing that focused an election rally for a pro-Taliban cleric rose to 54 Monday, as Pakistan held funerals and the federal government vowed to search out these behind the assault.
No one instantly claimed duty for Sunday’s bombing, which additionally wounded practically 200 individuals. Police stated their preliminary investigation urged that the Islamic State group’s regional affiliate could possibly be accountable.
The victims have been attending a rally organized by the Jamiat Ulema Islam celebration, headed by hard-line cleric and politician Fazlur Rehman. He didn’t attend the rally, held beneath a big tent near a market in Bajur, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province that borders Afghanistan.
Rehman, who has lengthy supported Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities, escaped at the least two recognized bomb assaults in 2011 and 2014, when bombings broken his automobile at rallies.
Victims of the bombing have been buried in Bajur on Monday.
As condolences continued to pour in from throughout the nation, dozens of people that obtained minor accidents have been discharged from hospital whereas the critically wounded have been taken to the provincial capital of Peshawar by military helicopters. The loss of life toll continued to rise as critically wounded individuals died in hospital, doctor Gul Naseeb stated.
Pakistani cops stand guard on the aftermath of Sunday’s suicide bomber assault within the Bajur district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, Monday, July 31, 2023.
AP Photo/Mohammad Sajjad
On Monday, police recorded statements from among the wounded at a hospital in Khar, Bajur’s largest city. Feroz Jamal, the provincial data minister, stated police have been “investigating this attack in all aspects.”
At least 1,000 individuals have been gathered beneath a big tent Sunday as their celebration ready for parliamentary elections, anticipated in October or November.
“People were chanting God is Great on the arrival of senior leaders, when I heard the deafening sound of the bomb,” stated Khan Mohammad, a neighborhood resident who stated he was standing exterior the tent.
Mohammad stated he heard individuals crying for assist, and minutes later ambulances began arriving and taking the wounded away.
Abdul Rasheed, a senior chief in Rehman’s celebration stated the bombing was geared toward weakening the celebration however that “such attacks cannot deter our resolve.”
Islamist teams have lengthy had a presence in Bajur. The district was previously a base for Al Qaida and a stronghold of the outlawed Pakistani Taliban, generally known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP. The military declared the district away from the group in 2016 following a sequence of offensives.
The IS regional affiliate, generally known as the Islamic State in Khorasan Province, relies in neighboring Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province and is a rival of the Afghan Taliban and Al Qaida.
Relatives and mourners carry the casket of a sufferer, who was killed in Sunday’s suicide bomber assault within the Bajur district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, Monday, July 31, 2023.
AP Photo/Mohammad Sajjad
Shaukat Abbas, a senior police officer, stated that police have made progress of their investigation, however didn’t present particulars.
Pakistani safety analyst Mahmood Shah informed The Associated Press that breakaway factions of the TTP is also behind the assault. He stated some TTP members have been recognized to disobey their high management to hold out assaults, as have breakaway factions of the group.
Shah stated such factions might have perpetrated the assault to trigger “confusion, instability and unrest ahead of the elections.”
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif is anticipated to dissolve Pakistan’s parliament in August.
Rehman’s celebration is a part of Sharif’s coalition authorities, which got here to energy in April 2022 by ousting former Prime Minister Imran Khan by way of a no-confidence vote within the legislature.
Sharif known as Rehman to specific his condolences and guarantee the cleric that those that orchestrated the assault could be punished. The bombing has additionally drawn nationwide condemnation, with ruling and opposition events providing condolences to the households of the victims. The U.S. and Russian embassies in Islamabad additionally condemned the assault.
Khan condemned the bombing Sunday.
The Pakistani Taliban additionally distanced themselves from the assault, saying that the assault aimed to set Islamists towards one another. Zabihullah Mujahid, the spokesman for the Afghan Taliban, wrote in a tweet that “such crimes cannot be justified in any way.”
The bombing got here hours earlier than the arrival of Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng in Islamabad, the place on Monday he was to take part in an occasion to mark a decade of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a sprawling package deal beneath which Beijing has invested billions of {dollars} in Pakistan.
In current months, China has helped Pakistan keep away from a default on sovereign funds. Some Chinese nationals have additionally been focused by militants in northwestern Pakistan and elsewhere.
Sunday’s bombing was one of many 4 worst assaults in northwestern Pakistan since 2014, when 147 individuals, largely schoolchildren, have been killed in a Taliban assault on an army-run faculty in Peshawar.
In January, 74 individuals have been killed in a bombing at a mosque in Peshawar. And in February, greater than 100 individuals, largely policemen, died in a bombing at a mosque inside a high-security compound housing Peshawar police headquarters.
Associated Press author Munir Ahmed contributed to this story from Islamabad.
© 2023 The Canadian Press
