Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province police chief Moazzam Jah Ansari said on Thursday that the police was “closing in” on the terror network behind the suicide attack on a mosque in the Peshawar Police Lines area, revealing that the bomber “was clad in a police uniform”, reports Dawn.
On Jan 30, a powerful explosion ripped through a mosque in Peshawar’s Red Zone area where between 300 and 400 people — mostly police officers — had gathered for prayers. The suicide blast blew away the wall of the prayer hall and an inner roof and claimed 101 lives.
The banned militant outfit Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility for the attack. 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.
Talking about the status of the investigation in an impassioned presser today in which he referred to police personnel as his children, Ansari said that the police had found ball bearings from the blast site. “We bound ball bearings used in a suicide jacket from underneath the rubble
yesterday.“This was a suicide bomber and we have traced him
we have obtained the CCTV footage of his movement from Khyber Road to the Police Lines then how he parked his motorcycle on a side he was in a police uniform and was wearing a mask and a helmet,” the officer revealed.He also confirmed that the severed head that the police found from the blast site was of the attacker.
Ansari said that policemen at the entrance of the Police Lines failed to “check the attacker because they thought he was their own”.
“At 12:37pm, he (the attacker) entered the main gate on a motorcycle, came inside, talked to a constable and asked him where the mosque was. This means that the attacker was not aware of the area
he was given a target and there is an entire network behind him … he was not a lone wolf,” Ansari said.He went on to say that the police have traced the attacker’s motorcycle as well. “Investigation is a process that will require time, we are doing it diligently but it will require some patience.”
At one point during the press conference, Ansari revealed that 10-12kg of TNT, a high explosive, was used in the blast. The combination of the explosive and the ageing building contributed to high death toll.
“In trinitrotoluene blasts, the shockwaves have no space to go anywhere,” he said, adding that this was the reason for the large number of casualties.
“The 50-year-old mosque at the Peshawar Police Lines did not have pillars… so when the bomb exploded, the walls and roof caved in. My children (the people inside the mosque) were trapped under the rubble for hours.”
He added that the police could have cleaned up the debris within two hours with heavy machinery but they didn’t do so. “This is why there are people who are still breathing in the hospital today.”
‘We Will avenge each and every death,’ he added.
