APS attack or madrassa bombing, enemy is the same: COAS
Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa inquiring the health of an injured of Peshawar blast. PHOTO: EXPRESS
Terrorists set off a bomb targeting young students at a Peshawar seminary on Tuesday in an attack which is reminiscent of the 2014 massacre of dozens of pupils at Army Public School (APS) in the same city.
“On December 16, 2014, innocent children were targeted at APS Peshawar. And on the occasion of Kashmir Black Day on October 27, 2020, the enemy once again massacred innocent madrassa students in furtherance of its nefarious designs,” army chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa said on Wednesday during a visit to Upper Dir district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.
The army chief wouldn’t name “the enemy”, but PM Imran’s point-man on national security Dr Moeed Yusuf revealed in a recent interview to an Indian journalist that the mastermind of the APS attack had been in contact with an Indian consulate in Afghanistan throughout the methodical killings of schoolchildren.
“It is the same enemy. Yesterday, the nation rejected this enemy and defeated their terrorist ideology. Today, we are united and will again fight it together,” Gen Qamar said during his daylong trip which also took him to the Lady Reading Hospital in Peshawar where most of the injured from Thursday’s bombing at Jamia Zubairia are being treated.
“I’ve come to express solidarity, especially to share the grief of these madrassa children, their families and their teachers,” he said. “We will not rest unless we bring all terrorists and their facilitators to justice.”
A large number of Afghan refugee children are among the victims of the madrassa bombing. “We share each other’s pain and grief,” the army chief said. “Both Afghanistan and Pakistan have faced terrorism during the last two decades.”
Gen Qamar said terrorism has no religion. This obscurantist ideology seeks to spread terror and create an atmosphere of fear in society. “The madrassa attack, in fact, shows hostility towards Islam,” he added. “They [terrorists] target innocent civilians, madrassas, religious places, mosques, imambargahs, churches, temples, educational institutions and law enforcement agencies.”
He called upon the Afghan refugee brethren in Pakistan to remain vigilant and stay away from such hostile forces so that they do not knowingly and unknowingly be used in terrorist activities.
Pakistani officials have repeatedly voiced fears that India is using the Afghan soil to launch terrorists into Pakistan. Prime Minister Imran Khan repeated this apprehension in a recent meeting with a delegation of Afghan MPs saying that “India could use the Afghan soil to destabilize Pakistan”.