Police Lines blast death toll revised

Police say confusion about death toll occurred at LRH due to multiple entries

PESHAWAR:

The police on Saturday claimed that a total of 84 people were martyred in the Police Lines mosque suicide attack instead of 102 widely reported in the media.

In a statement, the police said that some of the names of the victims were mentioned twice or thrice in the hospital lists.

“Some of the bodies were registered as unidentified.

Later, the identities were established but they remained on the same list,” the Peshawar police spokesperson said, adding that after completion of the verification process, it had been confirmed that there were 84 deaths, including that of civilians, in the attack.

The Lady Reading Hospital earlier claimed that 102 two bodies were brought to the hospital.

Peshawar Capital City Police Officer Ijaz Khan on Friday said that the body parts and helmet of the suicide bomber were found from the site of the attack.

He said that the suicide bomber, after reaching the mosque, left his helmet outside which was found along with the body parts, including his skull.

“The skull of the attacker has matched with the man seen in the footage. The crossmatch has confirmed that the video footage is of the suicide bomber,” he said, adding that the family of the woman, who was killed in the attack, is also being interrogated.

The Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) police on Thursday said the suicide bomber, who blew himself up at the mosque in Peshawar Police Lines on Monday wore a police constable’s uniform, a helmet as well as a mask and reached the blast site riding a motorcycle.

Moazzam Jah Ansari, the inspector general of the K-P police, told a news conference that the bomber had been identified as a member of a militant network, adding that the terrorist was not alone in the attack, rather a whole network was supporting him.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 5^th, 2023.