Taliban faction in Pakistan releases photo of alleged suicide bomber
Pakistan arrests more than 200 suspected militants following Easter bombing
(about 4 hours later)
LAHORE, Pakistan — The hard-line Taliban faction that claimed responsibility for an Easter suicide-bomb attack here released a photo of the alleged bomber Tuesday, as Pakistan officials said they had arrested more than 200 people in a campaign to ferret out extremists in the southern part of the country.
LAHORE, Pakistan — Pakistan’s security forces continued a major offensive Tuesday against suspected Islamist terrorists in the eastern province where a suicide bomber killed more than 70 people on Easter, as protesters who support the country’s strict blasphemy laws faced off with police in the country’s capital.
The suicide bomber, a man identified by the terrorist group Jamaat ul-Ahrar as Salahuddin Khorasani, donned a vest loaded with explosives and ball bearings and blew himself up in a park crowded with people Sunday evening, killing at least 70 people, including 29 children.
Both developments, though unlinked, highlight the enduring sectarian conflicts that have riven Pakistan and created a context of religious-based tension that pervades much of public life here.
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Officials in Punjab province, where Sunday’s attack occurred, said Tuesday that a joint military and police operation had conducted raids since Sunday evening and arrested more than 200 suspected militants. They said they would continue monitoring thousands of religious schools in the region for suspicious activity.
The terrorist group, an offshoot of the Pakistani Taliban, issued a statement that said that Khorasani “has carried out the attack on the eve of Christian festival Easter on March 27, 2016 as per his will. He has gifted his life to Allah.” A video is forthcoming, the group said.
“Action would be taken wherever we found the sleeper cells of terrorists. Terrorists will be eliminated from the Pakistani soil,” Lt. Gen. Asim Bajwa, the spokesman for the armed forces, said at a news conference.
Officials from Punjab, the province where Lahore is located, said at a news conference Tuesday that a joint force of military and police officers arrested more than 200 suspected extremists in a sweep targeting militants throughout Punjab and said that the area’s 13,000 religious seminaries remain under surveillance. Police said they were awaiting the results of DNA tests to officially identify the suicide bomber.
In the capital Islamabad, meanwhile, more than 1,000 protesters seeking a more purely fundamentalist Islamic nation continued to face off with police and security forces in the “Red Zone,” the official area that includes the country’s Parliament and other government buildings. More than 10,000 protesters had marched into the capital on Sunday, torching cars and buildings along the way.
Even after a week of terrorist violence in Iraq, Turkey and Belgium, the attack in Lahore has become a focus of global consternation. It was the country’s second major terrorist attack this year and the deadliest in Pakistan since nearly 150 people were killed at a school in Peshawar in late 2014. That year was followed by a relatively peaceful 2015. With this attack and an earlier assault on a university, the period of relative calm now seems to be over.
The group is protesting February’s execution of Mumtaz Qadri, a bodyguard who shot and killed a moderate governor in 2011 because the politician had criticized the country’s strict blasphemy laws, which allow for those who criticize Islam to be sentenced to death. Qadri was praised by some fundamentalists as a hero for his actions.
[An Easter Sunday suicide bombing shows plight of Pakistan’s Christians]
On Tuesday, about 1,400 protesters were massed near the Parliament and vowed they would stay until their voices are heard. Authorities had given them a two-hour deadline to disperse Tuesday evening, but the country’s interior minister later said that if a peaceful compromise couldn’t be reached, police would remove the protesters from the area Wednesday.
Pakistan’s military said Monday they arrested a “number of terrorist suspects and facilitators” in at least five separate raids in cities across Punjab, according to Lt. Gen. Asim Bajwa, an army spokesman. Bajwa also said that “a huge cache of arms and ammunition” was recovered in the operations, but he did not say where the weapons stockpile was found.
Demonstrators are demanding that Qadri be declared a martyr and his jail cell a shrine, that Islamic law be imposed, and that non-Muslims and minorities be removed from key government posts.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said in a televised address Monday night that Pakistan will not allow militants “to raise their heads again.” He earlier canceled a trip to Washington and visited the wounded at a hospital Monday.
“I have come for the imposition of the Islamic system in the country,” said protester Muhammad Jameel, 43, a shopkeeper from Jhelum. “Protest is our right and no law forbids it, and we will continue with our protest as long as our demands are not met.”
Lahore, Pakistan’s cultural center, remained in a period of official mourning, with schools and markets closed and little traffic. The tragedy drew condemnation from the United States and other governments around the world, including the Vatican, where Pope Francis on Monday decried the Easter bombing as “vile and abominable.” The pope called for Pakistan’s religious minorities to be protected. He urged authorities in Pakistan to “make every effort to restore security and serenity” to Pakistanis.
Hasan Askari Rizvi, a political and defense consultant, said that the country’s religious right is trying to assert its political clout out of fear that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has been influenced by secularists and that it has lost the active support of the military.
Authorities in Pakistan noted that more Muslims than Christians were killed and injured. Of those who died at the scene, 14 were Christian, 44 were Muslim, and nine could not immediately be identified, according to Muhammad Iqbal, the superintendent of police for operations in Lahore.
“On the one hand, they are opposed to the Taliban and support military action against them. On the other hand, they view Mumtaz Qadri as a hero, although he killed an eminent person,” he said. “These groups may not engage in suicide bombings or the Taliban-type attacks, but they can be violent to serve their religious cause.”
Pakistan, a country of 190 million, has suffered for years from sectarian violence and Islamist militancy, including a Taliban-led insurgency in the tribal areas on the border with Afghanistan. Critics have long said that Pakistan, while launching a major assault to push extremists out of their strongholds in the country’s federally administered tribal areas, has appeased other terrorist groups, particularly in the country’s south.
Eventually the military was brought in to contain the protest site.
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The two ongoing national events have no causal link, an editorial in the country’s English-language Dawn newspaper noted Tuesday, but “both are emblematic about just how broken parts of the state of Pakistan are.”
Recent terrorist attacks targeting minorities and schools have left many ordinary Pakistanis on edge.
“The perpetrators are all around us, hiding in plain view,” the editorial stated.
“This shouldn’t be happening,” said Rani Farzand, a teacher and neighbor of an 8-year-old girl who died in the blast. “The kids are not safe in the parks, in the schools, in the mosques. Where should we send our children? What should we do?”
Pakistan has been plagued by large-scale terrorist attacks since Sept. 11, 2001, and a series of governments have been criticized for not doing enough to address the root causes of violent extremism in the country.
On Monday, little remained of the carnage at the scene at Gulshan-e-Iqbal park, an oasis in Pakistan’s second-largest city.
A major assault by Pakistan’s military following school shootings in 2014 that left more than 150 dead largely cleared extremists from federally administered tribal areas in the country’s northwest, analysts say. But other terrorist groups, including those in Punjab — a stronghold of Sharif — operate virtually unchecked.
Police had cordoned off the bloodstained area between a fountain and a bumper-car ride in the children’s amusement section where the bomb exploded. Objects were left like small grace notes — a jeweled sandal, mangled reading glasses, a child’s shoe.
“The big military operation is not enough,” said Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistani ambassador to the United States and author of the book “Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military.”
At Jinnah Hospital in Lahore, where about half of the more than 300 injured were taken Sunday night, 67 remained hospitalized with a variety of injuries, including burns and shrapnel wounds, doctors said. Politicians and TV anchors weaved among through the beds, where occupants were labeled “blast victim.”
“They have to go after jihadis all over the country. Any exception will come back to haunt them,” he said.
Among them were two small children, their beds marked with signs saying “unknown.” Their family died in the blast, and they had yet to be linked with other relatives.
Life in Lahore, the country’s cultural hub and second-largest city, began returning to normal Tuesday, as schools and markets that had closed after the bombing reopened.
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The hard-line Taliban faction that claimed responsibility for the Easter attack in Lahore released a photo of the alleged suicide bomber.
Some were clearly still in shock. Zeeshan Taaj, 23, had been walking through the park on his way back from a pickup cricket match when the bomb detonated. He injured his leg in the aftermath and is trying to come to terms with what he saw: “Fire and smoke,” he said. “I have seen chopped legs blown off, heads and dead bodies scattered all around me.”
The bomber, a man identified by the terrorist group Jamaat ul-Ahrar as Salahuddin Khorasani, donned a vest loaded with explosives and ball bearings and blew himself up near a child’s amusement park crowded with people Sunday evening, killing at least 70, including 30 children.
A friend tried to comfort him by tucking a sheet around his still-bloodied leg wound.
The group later claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it had targeted Christians — though in the end, far more Muslims died.
In another bed, Tasleem Sultan, 40, described how she and four other adult family members took eight children to the kiddie amusement park Sunday night and found it bustling on the warm evening. Her niece, Zainab, 8, had donned her best red dress and put flower-shaped barrettes in her hair for the occasion. She rode an elephant on the merry-go-round. She was holding her aunt’s hand when the force of the explosion separated them.
The terrorist group, an offshoot of the Pakistani Taliban, issued a statement saying that Khorasani “has carried out the attack on the eve of Christian festival Easter on March 27, 2016 as per his will. He has gifted his life to Allah.”
Later, her father found Zainab, bleeding and lifeless.
Police said Tuesday they are awaiting the results of DNA tests to officially identify the suicide bomber.
“I was weeping. I am still in shock,” Jamshaid Iqbal, 35, said in an interview at his family home after her funeral. “Why isn’t the government protecting us?”
Hussain reported from Islamabad. Haq Nawaz in Peshawar and Babar Dogar in Lahore contributed to this report.
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In Islamabad on Monday, thousands of Muslim demonstrators protesting the execution of Islamist assassin Mumtaz Qadri staged a sit-in inside the capital city’s “Red Zone,” which is home to a number of vital government institutions, including Parliament and the prime minister’s house. Qadri assassinated Punjab’s governor, Salman Taseer, in 2011 over the latter’s opposition to Pakistan’s blasphemy laws.
Most blasphemy cases are lodged against non-Muslims for violations such as desecrating the Koran, Islam’s holy book, according to rights monitors. The army was deployed Sunday night to protect government buildings after the protesters rampaged across the city, damaging property and setting buildings on fire.
Erin Cunningham in Kabul, Babar Dogar in Lahore, and Haq Nawaz Khan and Aamir Iqbal in Peshawar, Pakistan, contributed to this report.
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Death toll in Pakistan bombing climbs past 70
Death toll in Pakistan bombing climbs past 70
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An armed Pakistani teacher is hailed as a hero after Taliban terrorist attack
Today's coverage from Post correspondents around the world
Today's coverage from Post correspondents around the world
