An explosion at a political rally on Sunday in northwest Pakistan killed at least 35 people and wounded 200 more, officials said, the latest sign of the deteriorating security situation in the country, where some militant groups have become more active over the past two years since finding a haven in neighbouring Afghanistan under the Taliban administration there.
The blast occurred around 4pm in Bajaur, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province near Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, said Feroz Jamal, the provincial information minister. It targeted a political rally organised by the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl, an Islamist party that is part of the governing coalition in Pakistan.
A video from the rally recorded before the explosion shows hundreds of men sitting outside beneath a cloth canopy as party officials addressed the crowd. Then an explosion rocked the crowd.
“I lost consciousness for a few minutes because of
the power of the explosion,” rally-goer Sharifullah Mamond, 19, said in a telephone interview from a hospital in Bajaur.
The provincial police chief, Akhtar Hayat Khan, told the local news media that the explosion was set off by a suicide bomber.
The death toll was expected to rise, officials said, and a rescue operation to recover the wounded was underway on Sunday evening. “The government is trying to shift critical patients to Peshawar and other hospitals on helicopters,” Jamal said.
Among those killed was Maulana Ziaullah, a local leader of the political party who was onstage when the explosion occurred. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. Officials said they suspected it might have been orchestrated by an Islamic State affiliate in the region that is active in northwest Pakistan.
The group has previously targeted members of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl because of the close relationships the party’s local leaders maintain with the Taliban administration in Afghanistan, experts say.
The Islamic State affiliate, known as the Islamic State Khorasan, or ISIS-K, has attacked the Taliban administration for not instituting what it considers a strict enough interpretation of Islamic principles in Afghanistan.
The blast was the latest attack to rattle Pakistan, where militant groups — including the Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, and the ISIS-K — have become more active in recent years. This year, the TTP has carried out several major attacks that have jolted Pakistanis’ already tenuous sense of security.
The rise of militant violence in recent months has stoked tension between Pakistan and the Taliban administration in Afghanistan.
New York Times News Service