Daily Times

LAHORE: Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa on Tuesday said that regional actors and hostile intelligence agencies were fully involved to use terror as policy tool, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) said.

“Concurrent blasts at Kabul and Lahore are testimony of our stance that both Pakistan and Afghanistan are victims of terrorism,” Gen Qamar said. “[The two countries] will continue to suffer if these actors are able to use Afghanistan territory with impunity.”

The COAS chaired a security meeting at Headquarters Lahore Corps where he was briefed on Operation Radd-ul-Fasaad and Lahore attack which claimed 25 lives.

Gen Qamar also said Pakistan was ready to help Afghanistan to eliminate terrorist safe heavens in their border areas as we have done on our side. “Such incidents cannot lower our resolve to eliminate terrorism from its roots,” the communiqué read.

“We have fought against terrorism as a nation and key to success is national participation by reporting every suspicious activity to security forces,” it added.

“We are making gains in breaking connectivity between terror masterminds and their facilitators/executors,” Gen Qamar said.

The COAS said that army fully supports and stands with police and other law enforcement agencies towards performance of their role as first responders. Later, he visited the injured of the blast at General Hospital. Lieutenant General Sadiq Ali Commander Lahore Corps and Inspector General Police Punjab were also present on the occasion.

The blast, which took place near the Arfa Karim Tower on Ferozepur Road on Monday afternoon, had taken the lives of 26, nine of them policemen. Another 54 were reported injured in the attack.

Lahore’s DIG Operations Dr Haider Ashraf had said that the blast was a “suicide attack” and that “police were the target”. The Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan claimed responsibility, stating that a “suicide attacker” had used a motorcycle bomb to target the police officials.

Anger was growing Tuesday as the grief-stricken relatives of 26 people killed by the suicide bomber buried their loved ones and demanded the government publicly hang the masterminds of the attack.

Families and residents in the bustling eastern city demanded action as they attended funeral prayers, and as the chief minister of Punjab province Shahbaz Sharif – brother of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif – visited survivors in hospital.

“We demand from the government of Pakistan that those who are involved in this incident and those who are the facilitators should be hanged in public,” Hafiz Naseer ul Din, uncle of a policeman killed in the blast, said.

“We came here in great grief,” added Shaikh Rizwan, a local resident who attended the funeral prayers for some of the victims.

“Twenty-six people were martyred here, I request my government that please uproot these terrorists fully so our country can progress,” he said.

On Tuesday distraught relatives carried the coffins of two policemen, brothers who were killed in the attack, to a petrol pump which had been turned into a makeshift prayer ground.

Floral wreaths from local police chiefs were placed on the wooden coffins as family members wept.

Police have said their initial investigations show the attack, claimed by the Pakistani Taliban, was carried out by a suicide bomber.

Forensic experts were collecting evidence from the site of the blast Tuesday, an AFP video reporter saw.

Lahore has been hit by significant militant attacks in Pakistan’s more than decade-long war on extremism, but they have been less frequent in recent years.

The last major blast in the city was in March last year, when 75 were killed and hundreds injured in a bomb targeting Christians celebrating Easter Sunday in a park.

But the country was also hit by a wave of attacks in February this year, including a bomb that killed 14 people in Lahore. In April a further seven were killed in an attack in the city targeting a team that was carrying out the country’s long overdue census.

Published in Daily Times, July 26^th , 2017.