Militants who attacked a minority sect, killing 93 people in the country’s east, belonged to the Pakistani Taliban and were trained in a lawless border region where the US wants Islamabad to mount an army operation, police said.
Saturday’s revelation could help the US persuade Pakistan that rooting out the various extremist groups in North Waziristan is in Islamabad’s own interest. Up to now, Pakistan has resisted, in part because it says its army is stretched thin in operations elsewhere.
Suspicion that the man accused of a failed bombing attempt in New York’s Times Square earlier this month may have received aid from the Pakistani Taliban has added to US urgency about clearing North Waziristan.
PHOTO: EPA
Local TV channels have reported the Pakistani Taliban, or an affiliate, had claimed responsibility for Friday’s attacks in Pakistan’s second-largest city.
Senior police officer Akram Naeem in Lahore said the interrogation of one of the arrested suspects revealed that the gunmen were involved with the Pakistani Taliban. The 17-year-old suspect told police the attackers had trained in the North Waziristan tribal region.
“Our initial investigation has found that they all belong to Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan,” or Pakistani Taliban movement, Naeem said. He said the suspect, “Abdullah alias Mohammad, was given terrorism training in Miran Shah” — the main city in North Waziristan.
North Waziristan has long been filled with militants focused on battling US and NATO forces across the border in Afghanistan. The Pakistani Taliban began arriving after army operations against them in other regions.
Before the Pakistani Taliban began operating in North Waziristan, Islamabad was believed to want to avoid taking on the area because the militant networks there were not threatening targets inside the country. Critics also suspect Pakistan wants to maintain good relations with some of those Afghan-focused militant networks so that it will have allies in Afghanistan once the US leaves the region.
Naeem would not rule out that Punjab Province-based militant groups played a role in the Lahore attacks, but would not mention any specific groups. The Pakistani Taliban have local affiliates and function as a coalition or network of militant organizations.
Pakistani Army chief spokesman Major General Athar Abbas, declined to comment on Saturday.
Friday’s attacks targeted the Ahmadi sect, a minority reviled by mainstream Muslims.
Two teams of gunmen, including some in suicide vests, stormed two mosques and sprayed bullets at worshippers while holding off police.
At least two of the seven attackers were captured, while some died in the standoff or by detonating their explosives.
Militants have used such tactics in attacking Pakistan’s US-allied government and foreign and security targets often in the past, but violence against religious minorities had previously not been waged in such a large-scale, sophisticated fashion.
Ahmadi leaders on Saturday demanded better government protection as they buried many of the victims. Waseem Sayed, a US-based Ahmadi spokesman, said it was the worst attack in the sect’s 121-year history.
The request could test the government’s willingness to take on hard-line Islamists whose influence is behind decades of state-sanctioned discrimination against the Ahmadis in the Sunni Muslim-majority country.
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