New Delhi: Police said on Thursday (February 2, 2023) that the suicide bomber who killed more than 100 people at a mosque in Pakistan’s Peshawar this week was in police uniform. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province police chief Moazzam Jah Ansari told reporters that the attacker behind Monday’s attack was identified as a member of a terrorist network and had entered the high-security area on a motorcycle.
Ansari said, “I agree it was a security lapse. My men could not stop it. It is my fault.”
Ansari said the CCTV footage showed the assailant wearing a helmet and mask riding a motorcycle from the main police line post.
Ansari said that after this he parked his bike, asked the way to the mosque and went there.
“The police personnel posted at the main entrance, thinking he was a member of the force, did not check him,” Ansari said.
On Wednesday, the police chief said investigators were not ruling out that the attacker could have had “inside help”.
Peshawar mosque blast is biggest attack on Pakistani security forces in recent history
Authorities in Pakistan said on Wednesday that the death toll from a suicide bombing at a Peshawar mosque rose by one to 101. All but three of those killed were police officers, in what is the deadliest attack on Pakistani security forces in recent history.
Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Mohammad Asif on Tuesday blamed the attack on the Pakistani Taliban, or Tehreek-e Taliban-Pakistan (TTP), saying they were operating from neighboring Afghan territory.
They demanded that the Afghan Taliban take action against them.
A TTP commander at first claimed responsibility, but a spokesman for the group later distanced the TTP from the massacre, saying it was not its policy to attack mosques.