Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Police Chief Moazzam Jah Ansari said on Thursday that the police was “closing in” on the terror network behind the suicide attack on a mosque in the Peshawar Police Lines area, revealing that the “bomber was clad in a police uniform”.
On Jan 30, a powerful explosion ripped through a mosque in Peshawar’s Red Zone area where between 300 and 400 people — mostly police officers — had gathered for prayers. The suicide blast blew away the wall of the prayer hall and an inner roof.
Talking about the status of the probe at a presser today, Ansari said that the police had found ball bearing from the blast site. “We bound ball bearings used in a suicide jacket from underneath the rubble [of the mosque] yesterday.
“This was a suicide bomber and we have traced the him […] we have obtained the CCTV footage of his movement from Khyber Road to the Police Lines […] then how he parked his motorcycle on a side […] he was in a police uniform,” the officer revealed.
Ansari said that policemen at entrance of the Police Lines did not “check the attacker because they thought he was their own”.
“At 12:37pm, he [the attacker] entered from the main gate, came inside, talked to a constable and asked him where the mosque was, this means that the attacker was not aware of the area […] he was given a target and there is an entire network behind him … he was not a lone ranger,” Ansari said.
