The attack that killed 100 people in a mosque within the police headquarters of Peshawar, in northwestern Pakistan, was committed in retaliation for police operations targeting armed Islamist groups, estimated on Tuesday January 31 , the local police chief.

About 300 to 400 police were gathered at a mosque inside the usually heavily guarded perimeter on Monday when the explosion occurred at the time of the noon prayer.

The government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, of which Peshawar is the capital, said the latest death toll was 100 dead and 221 injured.

The vast majority are police officers.

"We are on the front line" in this fight against armed Islamist movements "and that is why we have been targeted," Peshawar police chief Muhammad Ijaz Khan told AFP.

“The objective was to demoralize us as a force” of police.

Attacks on increasing patrols in Peshawar

Attacks by insurgents against patrols, roadblocks or police stations have increased in Peshawar, located about 50 kilometers from the border with Afghanistan, and in the surrounding former tribal areas, since the return of the Taliban to power in Kabul in August 2021.

They are mainly led by the Pakistani Taliban of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which regained their freedom of movement with the departure of American forces from Afghanistan, or by EI-K, the regional branch of the jihadist group Islamic State (IS).

But large-scale attacks, like this one, are still rather rare.

Moazzam Jah Ansari, the provincial police chief, told the press that a suicide bomber had managed to enter the mosque, carrying 10 to 12 kilos of "explosives in small pieces".

He added that a group sometimes affiliated with the TTP, sometimes dissident, could be behind this attack.

The authorities wonder how the security of this place, which also houses the premises of various intelligence agencies, could have been defeated.

 "Trapped Under the Debris"

Bodies continued to be removed Tuesday from the rubble of the mosque whose roof and a wall collapsed under the blast of the explosion.

Rescuers used cameras and listening devices to try to locate any survivors under the debris.

"I was trapped under the debris with the body of a dead man on top of me for seven hours. I had lost all hope of surviving," Wajahat Ali, a 23-year-old police officer, told AFP in a hospital.

Dozens of police officers have already been buried in honor guard ceremonies, their coffins lined up and girded with the Pakistani flag.

Analysts believe the TTP has been emboldened by the success of the Taliban.

Pakistan accuses them of letting this group use Afghan soil to plan its attacks, which Kabul disputes.

The TTP, a movement distinct from that of the new Afghan leaders but which shares common roots with it, denied being responsible for Monday's attack.

After its creation in 2007, the TTP killed tens of thousands of Pakistani civilians and members of the security forces, before being driven out of the tribal areas by a military operation launched by the army in 2014.

"A Sacred Place"

Back in force in recent months, it wants to be less brutal than in the past and claims to only target the security forces and in no case places of worship.

But a local security official who requested anonymity told AFP that authorities were considering all eventualities, including the involvement of a splinter faction of the TTP, EI-K or a coordinated attack by several groups. .

"Often in the past, armed groups, including the TTP, have carried out attacks on mosques without claiming it, because a Sunni mosque is considered a sacred place," he also said.

The capital and the rest of the country, particularly on the border with Afghanistan, were placed on heightened alert after the attack.

"The terrorists want to create panic by targeting those who are fulfilling their duty to defend Pakistan," Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said in a statement.

"Those who fight Pakistan will be wiped off the face of the earth."

In New York, the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, denounced an "abject" attack against a place of worship.

Peshawar was ravaged by near-daily attacks during the first half of the 2010s, but security there had improved greatly in recent years.

It has deteriorated again for a few months.

In March 2022, a suicide attack claimed by EI-K in a Shiite mosque in Peshawar killed 64 people, the deadliest in Pakistan since 2018.

With AFP

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