Identity of bomber established

PESHAWAR:

Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) has claimed identifying the suicide bomber who targeted the Frontier Corps convoy in Hayatabad Peshawar.

Talking to The Express Tribune an official of the investigation team said that the route the suicide bomber had taken has also been identified as he used Ring Road to enter Hayatabad in his motor car and the SIM used by the bomber has already been recovered.

“He used a SIM registered in someone else name and the owner of the SIM has been arrested by police. The bomber received calls from different parts of the country. His mobile phone has also been found intact,” said the police official.

“We have identified the suicide bomber and all his data has been obtained from NADRA.

It will lead police to the master minds of the attack hopefully,” he said.

Earlier police claimed that the suicide bomber had a wheel chair in his car and he had a drip too which showed him as a patient.

It helped him cross all the check posts without inviting any attention from the policemen deployed at different check posts.

Police also claimed that the chassis of the vehicle used in the attack has also been recovered in intact condition and it showed that the vehicle had been stolen from Rawalpindi a few days ago.

On July 18, eight personnel were injured and an attacker was killed in a suicide blast near a paramilitary force vehicle in Peshawar.

Tehreek-e-Jihad Pakistan, a newly founded militant group, claimed responsibility for the attack.

“One [was] martyr[ed], seven injured but all stable,” a high-ranking police official said, on condition of anonymity.

Hayatabad Medical Complex Medical (HMC) Director Prof Shehzad Akbar Khan confirmed that the hospital received two people who were wounded by the explosion and that both were in stable condition.

He said the remaining injured were taken to another hospital, Combined Military Hospital (CMH).

The explosion was a suicide attack that hit a vehicle of the paramilitary Frontier Corps in Peshawar, police said. Pakistan’s army said on Friday it was seriously concerned that militants had found safe havens in neighbouring Afghanistan and threatened to take an ‘effective response’ two days after 12 of its soldiers died in two attacks.

The terrorists have stepped up attacks since revoking a ceasefire agreement with the government in late 2022, including the bombing of a mosque in Peshawar that killed more than 100 people earlier this year.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 23^rd, 2023.