A suicide bomber’s blast ended more than 100 lives in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar, devastating a mosque in a supposedly secure sector of the city, and sending smoke plumes into the sky and panic through the streets.

But more than that: The attack on Monday knocked a terrorism-scarred city back in time, to the era a decade ago when Peshawar became synonymous with the wreckage of a militant campaign that profoundly changed a nation.

In the years after 2015, when Pakistani Taliban fighters and other militants were mostly pushed out of the region — many into neighbouring Afghanistan — Peshawar residents dared to hope that the days of random terrorist attacks were behind them.

But on Tuesday, as emergency responders pulled body after body from the rubble, questions immediately intensified about the government’s ability to fight a new wave of militancy amid a seemingly intractable economic and political crisis.

The bombing was one of the bloodiest suicide attacks to hit Pakistan in years, killing at least 101 people and wounding 217 others, hospital officials said. Many of the casualties were police officers and government employees who had gone to pray at the mosque, in a heavily guarded neighbourhood near several important government and military buildings.

The attack has added to recent evidence that the Pakistani Taliban, a faction of which claimed responsibility, is regaining strength from safe havens in Afghanistan under that country’s new government.

“The scale of this attack, that it targeted policemen at a mosque in a secure part of Peshawar — this really brings about a sense of déjà vu, a vivid reminder of the insecurity and violence that engulfed Pakistan a decade ago,” said Madiha Afzal, a fellow at the Brookings Institution.

In Peshawar, the memory of those days is visceral — and the sense of loss from the attack is profound. As dusk fell on Tuesday, and the shaken city gathered to bury rows and rows of coffins, many were wondering: Have the days of blood and horror returned? And if they have, where will the country go from here?

“For a few years, there was calm and peace in Peshawar,” said Akbar Mohmand,34, a rickshaw driver in the city. “But it seems that suicide bombing and terrorism has returned.”

For most of the past 40years, Peshawar has suffered from the conflicts in the region. In the 1980s, it became a staging ground for fighters struggling against the Soviet-backed Afghan government, and after the US toppled Afghanistan’s Taliban regime in 2001, thousands of Taliban fighters and al Qaida members took refuge in so-called tribal areas along the border.

For years, Taliban leaders recruited Pakistanis who, like the Afghan Taliban, were ethnically Pashtun, while Pakistani military authorities tried to drive the militants out.

By 2007, a loose network of militants had asserted their own leadership and formed the Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP.

The group quickly emerged as one of Pakistan’s deadliest militant organisations, carrying out attacks across the country.

During that time, Peshawar became the centre of the conflict.

New York Times News Service