Authorities are investigating how a suicide bomber killed at least 100 people at a mosque in a high-security zone in Peshawar, Pakistan. The attack, one of the country's deadliest in recent years, has shocked Pakistanis. Most of the dead were security force members at prayer. The city police, who are on the frontlines against militants, believe they were targeted to demoralize them. A claim that the hard-line Islamist militant group Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), as it is known, carried out the bombing was later denied by the group, which blamed it on the commander of a breakaway faction. The Pakistan Taliban has been blamed for more than 100 attacks since walking out of a ceasefire with the Pakistani government last November. However, even if the core of the TTP is trying to distance itself from the attack, a TTP splinter group called Jamaat-ul-Ahrar has claimed responsibility, saying the attack was in retaliation for the death last year of its leader, Omar Khalid Khurasani. The suicide bombing at a mosque in northwestern Pakistan that killed dozens of officers is the country's worst terrorist attack in years. It signals a growing wave of Taliban-fueled militancy targeting the state. As Pakistan mulls its response to the rising threat from Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan, parliamentarians, including ministers, this week demanded that the military provide information about terrorism and leave the decision-making to elected representatives. Pakistan’s Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah said the masterminds of the Peshawar Mosque attack could be in Afghanistan and added that the federal government would raise this issue with their Afghan counterparts.
Now only time will tell where the situation goes in Pakistan. But it is evident the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan shook its neighboring country too.
