Interior Minister Blames ISIS-Khorasan For Imambargh Blast

ISLAMABAD: While squarely blaming ISIS-Korasan for the suicide bombing at Islamabad Imambargh, Pakistan’s Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi pointed out that TTP, Afghan Taliban and ISIS-Khorasan were working as one entity.

While talking to media in Islamabad Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi said all the four facilitators of the suicide attack on an imambargah in Islamabad, including the “main mastermind”, had been arrested by Pakistani security forces.

He specially praises the Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) and the KP police for their joint efforts. He said “All those people linked to this, and the mastermind, at around 3am, all of them were apprehended.”

“After the blast, raids were carried out in Nowshera and Peshawar, in which four facilitators were caught. And their mastermind, who is an Afghan, was also caught,” he said.

He said that an assistant sub-inspector of KP police was killed during the raids on terrorist hideout in KP.“But the main mastermind is linked to Daesh and is in our custody,”

“We have people who are telling us details about how he (the attacker) went there and how he was trained,” he said.

“We have been saying for a while that whether it be Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Afghan Taliban, Daesh or other kharji terrorist organisations — they are all working together. At this time, 21 terrorist bodies’ setups … name any terrorist body, it is operating from Afghanistan,” he said.

The minister further said that he had two requests for the public.

There was a time when TTP was collaborating with ISIS-Khorasan but then the two terrorist groups developed animosity towards each other. This seems to indicate an anomaly in the intelligence information published in Pakistani newspapers. While it is generally believed that it is ISIS-Khorasan which targets members of Shia community and their mosques and places of worship in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The other piece of information that suicide bomber underwent training in a training camp under the control of TTP seems to contradict the first piece of information. How can a suicide bomber who targeted Shia worshippers at the behest of ISIS-K, underwent training in the camp under the control of TTP, which is generally believed to be rival of ISIS-K.

Sources close to the investigation, as reported by The Express Tribune, indicated that while Khan was a Pakistani national, he had traveled to and from Afghanistan multiple times to coordinate the assault.

Although the investigation is ongoing, security officials cited by Dawn and other outlets have pointed toward the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) due to the nature and target of the attack.

The attacker’s identity was verified through fingerprint analysis cross-referenced with NADRA records.

Interior Ministry confirmed suicide attackers as Yasir Khan, age 32. He was a resident of Peshawar.

While no group has officially claimed responsibility, investigators suggest possible links to the banned outfit ISIS-Khorasan.

At the moment the situation is pretty confusing: if we believed Defense Minister Khawaja Asif’s allegations against the Afghan Taliban and India to be true, we have to understand that we have to ignore all the evidence which indicates ISIS-K to be the perpetrators of the attack. It is pertinent to mention here that Afghan Taliban’s state machinery is in full gear in their military campaign against ISIS-K.

But then we cannot ignore the intelligence information published by Pakistan media that the suicide bomber spent five months in a training camp being run by Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan. And this information makes TTP the main culprit of Islamabad Imam bargah suicide bombing.