Pakistan: Pakistan’s military says it has arrested four “facilitators” who helped the attacker in Friday’s deadly Islamabad mosque bombing as authorities intensify a security crackdown amid rising concerns over cross-border attacks.
Thousands of mourners gathered in the capital on Saturday to bury the victims of the attack, which killed at least 32 worshippers and injured 170 others, officials said.
The military said on Saturday that a “major breakthrough has been made in the investigation into the Trilai Kalan Islamabad suicide attack, with intelligence and law enforcement agencies conducting raids and making arrests in Peshawar and Nowshera”.
It said that the operations, based on technical and human intelligence, led to the arrest of “four facilitators of the suicide attacker, as well as the Afghan Daesh [ISIL or ISIS] mastermind behind the attack”.
The military alleged that the “planning, training, and indoctrination for the attack took place in Afghanistan”, adding that under “Afghan Taliban patronage, extremist groups continue to pose a serious threat to regional and global peace”.
Earlier in the day, police said “two brothers and a woman” were arrested during a raid on what they described as the alleged suicide bomber’s hideout.
Friday’s powerful explosion struck the Khadija Tul Kubra Shia mosque in the Tarlai Kalan area on the outskirts of Islamabad. The ISIL armed group claimed responsibility.
The attack was the deadliest in Islamabad since September 2008, when a suicide truck bomb killed more than 60 people and destroyed part of the five-star Marriott Hotel. While bombings are rare in the heavily guarded capital, this is the second such attack in three months, raising fears of a return to violence in Pakistan’s major urban centres.
