PESHAWAR, Feb 1 (Reuters): Major arrests have been made in connection with the Police Lines mosque bombing that killed over 100 people on Monday, Peshawar police chief Ijaz Khan told Reuters on Wednesday.
He said police are investigating how the suicide bomber entered the highly-secured police area, and could not rule out internal assistance to carry out the attack.
The statement from the city police chief comes hours after the completion of the rescue operation that started following the suicide bombing inside the mosque on Monday in which 103 people were martyred while 221 were injured.
The bombing — one of the worst in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa —shocked the country prompting calls for the launch of military operations against the militants to curb the surging terrorism.
Security lapse
On Tuesday, Inspector General of Police (IGP) Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Moazzam Jah Ansari admitted security lapse in the Peshawar Police Lines suicide bombing.
Appearing in Geo News programme ‘Aaj Shahzeb Khanzada Kay Sath’, he said that the Police Lines has only one gate and every minute of the security footage was being analysed to see how and when the suicide bomber sneaked into the area.
“Unluckily, Peshawar city lacks the Safe City Project due to which help is being sought from the security cameras installed around the premises,” Moazzam said.
He said that they were reviewing whether the alleged bomber entered the area on the same day or a couple of days before, and how the explosives were brought inside.
The police chief said that the canteen inside the compound has several civilian employees while all commodities and other goods are also brought (from outside).
“Construction work is also going on.”
He said the body parts of the suicide bomber had been dispatched to the Punjab Forensic Science Agency, as there was no such facility available in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Answering a question concerning the regrouping of the TTP, the IGP said there was no organised presence of the banned terrorist outfit in the province but its splinter groups, comprising five to ten persons, were present at different places and they faced no difficulty in their inter-border movement.
He said that there had been facilities for them across the border and they have been using these facilities in the past as well.
