IS suicide bomber of Peshawar mosque was Afghan: police

PESHAWAR:

An Islamic State (IS) suicide bomber who killed 64 people at a mosque in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa last week was an Afghan exile who returned home to train for the attack, police said on Wednesday.

Two senior police officials told AFP that the suicide bomber responsible for Peshawar blast had prepared the attack in Afghanistan. It was claimed by IS.

The officials said the attacker was an Afghan national in his 30s who moved to Pakistan with his family decades ago.

"The bomber went (back) to Afghanistan, trained there and returned without informing his family," one of the senior police officials told AFP.

"Islamic State-Khorasan is becoming a strong threat for us, they are operating from Afghanistan but they have sleeping cells here," he added.

Taliban officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Police said they had killed three "facilitators" of the Peshawar attack in an overnight operation, and arrested 20 others suspected of involvement.

IS also claimed responsibility for what it said was a suicide blast on Tuesday that killed seven paramilitary troops near a site in southwestern Pakistan where the president had visited less than half an hour earlier.

Since the Taliban's return to power in Afghanistan, Islamabad has acted as a key broker between the hardliners and the international community.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 10^th, 2022.