MUNIR AHMED
ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistan launched an investigation Wednesday into a bombing outside the Islamabad District Court that killed 12 people a day earlier. The event underscored the challenges facing the government as it grapples with militant attacks, border tensions and a fragile ceasefire with Afghanistan.
The attack on the court, located on the outskirts of the city and near a residential area, also raised alarms that despite numerous security operations to suppress militants, they are still capable of carrying out high-profile attacks in the Pakistani capital.
Authorities have struggled with a rise in armed attacks in recent years, but before Tuesday's attack, Islamabad was generally considered safer.
On Wednesday, forensic experts and police were combing through the wreckage of the blast site, which had been sealed off to preserve evidence. Elsewhere in the city, grieving relatives received the bodies of their murdered loved ones at a hospital.
Most of the 27 people injured in the attack were discharged after receiving treatment.
Pakistani Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi said immediately after Tuesday's blast that the attack was “carried out by Indian-backed elements and allies of the Afghan Taliban” linked to the Pakistani Taliban, although he said authorities were “investigating all aspects” of the blast.
He provided no evidence for his claim and New Delhi rejected it as baseless.
Naqvi blamed the attack on the Pakistani Taliban, known as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP.
The TTP denied involvement and the dissident Jamaat-ul-Ahrar faction claimed responsibility only for one of its commanders to later deny the claim.
Jamaat-ul-Ahrar left the TTP after its leader was killed in Afghanistan in 2022. Some members have rejoined the TTP while others remain independent, highlighting divisions within Pakistan's armed networks.
The attack drew widespread condemnation from the international community.
Attack on a military university
The attack in Islamabad came a day after four gunmen attacked an army cadet university in the northwestern city of Wana. Police said four attackers, including a suicide car bomber, were killed and more than 600 people, including 525 cadets, were safely rescued in the overnight attack.
A suicide bomber rammed a car filled with explosives into the gates of the complex. Troops were quickly deployed across the campus to prevent the attackers from reaching the buildings where cadets and staff were holed up.
Footage broadcast on Pakistani news channels Wednesday showed soldiers evacuating cadets, using wooden ladders and breaking windows to enter dormitories. The evacuees were transported to safety in armored vehicles, officials said.
No one claimed responsibility for the attack.
Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said the attackers appeared to be trying to repeat the 2014 Peshawar school massacre, the country's deadliest school attack, when a breakaway TTP faction killed 154 people, mostly children, at a military school in Peshawar.
Escalation with Afghanistan
Tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan have risen since last month, when Kabul blamed Islamabad for the Oct. 9 drone strikes that killed several people in the Afghan capital.
The attacks sparked cross-border clashes that killed dozens of soldiers, civilians and militia members before Qatar reached a ceasefire on October 19. Two rounds of subsequent peace talks in Istanbul ended without progress after Kabul refused to provide written guarantees that militants would not use Afghan soil to launch attacks in Pakistan.
The TTP, which is allied with but separate from the Afghan Taliban, has been emboldened since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan in 2021. It is believed that many TTP militants have taken refuge in Afghanistan and have launched attacks on Pakistan from across the border.
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Associated Press writers Ishtiaq Mahsud in Dera Ismail Khan, Pakistan, and Riaz Khan and Rasool Dawar in Peshawar, Pakistan, contributed to this story.
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This story was translated from English by an AP editor using a generative artificial intelligence tool.
