Pakistan PM Shehbaz Sharif vows to punish attackers after bomb attack

Pakistan’s prime minister Shehbaz Sharif has vowed to punish the perpetrators of a bomb attack that killed at least 45 people and injured more than 130 at a political gathering in the country’s north in one of the worst terrorist attacks in recent years.

The suicide bombing on Sunday targeted a rally of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (F), a hardline Sunni Muslim party that is part of Pakistan’s ruling coalition. The rally, held to drum up support ahead of elections later this year, took place in the country’s Bajaur district, which borders Afghanistan and has been racked by growing Islamic militancy in recent years.

Mr Sharif late on Sunday called the attack an assault on “the democratic system in Pakistan” and said: “Those responsible will be identified and punished.”

“The Pakistani nation, law enforcement agencies and our protectors will never allow such cowardly tactics of the enemy to succeed,” he said.

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The Islamic State terror group on Monday claimed responsibility for the bombing, in a statement on its Telegram account. Police officers in Peshawar had already said that early investigations into the attack pointed to the potential involvement of a local offshoot of Islamic State, also known as Isis.

The attack underscored the deteriorating security situation in Pakistan since the Taliban took power in neighbouring Afghanistan in 2021.

This has led to an increase in cross-border militancy from groups such as the Pakistani Taliban, or TTP, who have waged a brutal campaign against Mr Sharif’s government since a ceasefire with the group ended last year. Recent violence has been concentrated primarily in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the north-western province where Sunday’s attack occurred.

Last week, a police officer died after a suicide attack in the province, and in January, a suicide attack in the provincial capital Peshawar killed more than 100, many of them police personnel.

“There is a terror campaign going on against Pakistan,” said Ayaz Amir, a former member of Pakistan’s parliament. “Most of Pakistan’s military presence today is on the eastern border [with India], but the threat is growing on the western border” with Afghanistan, he said.

Analysts have warned that the spate of attacks threatens to undo years of hard-fought gains in public security.

Pakistan suffered heavily during the US war in neighbouring Afghanistan, with tens of thousands killed in attacks involving the TTP and others. In 2014, TTP gunmen killed about 150 people, mostly children, in an assault on a school in Peshawar.

Pakistan’s opposition leader, Imran Khan, said on Sunday that “Pakistan cannot afford another wave of terrorism” and called for the state to invest more in security.

Mr Khan and Mr Sharif have been engaged in a bitter dispute in the run-up to elections, with analysts warning that the country’s political instability risks exacerbating security issues.

Pakistan held funerals on Monday for victims of the bombing, who were all from Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (F), which is headed by hardline cleric and politician Fazlur Rehman. He did not attend the rally, held under a large tent close to a market in Bajaur, a district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province that borders Afghanistan.

The Islamic State in Khorasan Province is a regional affiliate of Islamic State and the affiliate is based in neighbouring Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province and is a rival of the Afghan Taliban.

Bajaur was a stronghold of the Pakistani Taliban – a close ally of Afghanistan’s Taliban government – before several Pakistani army offensives that ended in 2016 claimed to have driven them out of the area. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2023/Addtional reporting: agencies