Suicide bomber at political rally in Pakistan kills at least 54 people

Khar, Aug,1: Hundreds of mourners attended funerals Monday after a massive suicide bombing killed at least 54 people at an election rally for a pro-Taliban cleric, carrying caskets draped in colourful clothes to burial sites in the hills.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for Sunday’s bombing, which killed at least five children and wounded nearly 200 people.

The attack appeared to reflect divisions between Islamist groups, which have a strong presence in areas like Bajur, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province that borders Afghanistan. It targeted a political party with ties to the Afghan and Pakistan Taliban.

At 1,000 people, according to police, were crowded into a tent near a market for a rally organized by the Jamiat Ulema Islam party as it prepared for fall elections.

“People were chanting God is Great as the leaders arrived," said Khan Mohammad, a local resident who said he was standing outside the tent, "and that was when I heard the deafening sound of the bomb.”

Mohammad said he heard people crying for help, and minutes later ambulances arrived and began taking the wounded away.

Police said their initial investigation suggested that the Islamic State group’s regional affiliate, a rival of the Taliban, could be responsible, while a Pakistan security analyst pointed to breakaway factions of the Pakistan Taliban as possible suspects.

The Pakistani military spent years fighting the Pakistan Taliban, also known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, in Bajur before declaring the district clear of militants in 2016. But the Jamiat Ulema Islam party, headed by hard-line cleric and politician Fazlur Rehman, has remained a potent political force.

Bajur resident Salim Khan, 45, said from a hospital bed that he lost consciousness after the bombing. “When I opened my eyes, I was here in the hospital, and I only remember that I heard a large explosion,” he said.

On Monday, police recorded statements from some of the wounded at a hospital in Khar, the district's principal town. Shaukat Abbas, a senior police officer, said that police have made progress in their investigation, but did not provide details.

The Islamic State in Khorasan Province, which police identified as a suspect in the attack, is based in neighbouring Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province and is a rival of the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaida.

Pakistani security analyst Mahmood Shah said that breakaway factions of the Pakistani Taliban could also be behind the attack. He said some TTP members have been known to disobey their top leadership to carry out attacks, as have breakaway factions of the group.

Shah said such factions could have perpetrated the attack to cause “confusion, instability and unrest ahead of the elections.”

Female relatives and children wailed and beat their chests at family homes as the dead were taken for funerals, following local customs. Hundreds of men followed the caskets to mosques and open areas for special funeral prayers and then into the hills for burial.

As condolences continued to pour in from across the country, dozens of people who received lesser injuries were discharged from hospital, while the critically wounded were taken to the provincial capital of Peshawar by army helicopters. The death toll continued to rise as some critically wounded people died in hospital, physician Gul Naseeb said. (AP)