Christian Colony attackers were foreigners: Nisar

Says terrorists managed to strike even though intelligence alerts were sent

MARDAN: The four suicide bombers killed on Friday in a botched attack on Peshawar’s Christian Colony were foreigners, the country’s security czar on Saturday, citing preliminary investigations.

“We are investigating how did the bombers manage to sneak into our tribal belt,” Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, the federal interior minister, said while speaking to journalists after addressing the Mardan bar room on Sunday.

Nisar visited Mardan a day after a suicide bomber mowed down 13 people – including lawyers and policeman – at the Mardan District Courts in an attack apparently targeted at the country’s legal community.

According to him, two intelligence reports had been shared with authorities in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa about possible terrorist attacks on district courts. Rectification of any weaknesses in the security plan is a shared responsibility of both federal and provincial governments, he said.

The interior minister said investigations were under way to identify the attackers involved in Mardan Courts and Christian Colony attacks and their facilitators.

He revealed that there were intelligence reports about the attack on Christian Colony. “We have to take extensive pre-emptive measures for making security system foolproof,” he added.

Terming it a failure of the K-P government, Nisar said Friday’s bombing in Mardan could have been averted had the provincial government coordinated with the Centre.

"We had intelligence alerts about possible attacks in three to four districts of K-P but the provincial government doesn’t coordinate with us on security issues, which led to such inhuman attacks on Mardan Courts and Christian Colony,” he added. Four districts of K-P – Swabi, Mardan, Charsadda and Peshawar – are on the red-line of security as most political and religious leaders live here.

The interior minister said that terrorists through such cowardly attacks wanted to spread disappointment among K-P people, but they would fail in their designs because the people’s morale was sky-high.

He said peace has been restored as a result of military operations in the tribal regions and combing operations across the country. “We have dismantled the safe havens of terrorists in Fata and in the settled areas of the country,” he said, but admitted that the security situation was not entirely under control.

"Pakistan’s security forces have won a difficult war but there is still more to be done to eradicate terrorism," he said. "Previously, there were attacks almost every day, now they happen in months."

Nisar said Pakistan's war against terrorism was a battle for its survival. He criticised those who sought to politicise terrorist attacks, saying they were putting the country's future at stake.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 4^th, 2016.