Charsadda, new Taliban attack on a court: 7 dead

Three suicide bombers mingled among a crowd of lawyers. The timely intervention of the agents avoided a worse toll. It is the seventh attack in just over a week. The Taliban group attack in retaliation against the killing of one of its radical leaders.

 


Peshawar (AsiaNews) - The spiral of violence that has enveloped Pakistan in recent weeks shows no sign of ending. After six bombings in recent days, yesterday three bombers carried out yet another massacre on Charsadda court, about 30 km from Peshawar (in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province).

The toll is seven dead, including a lawyer, and 20 wounded. The attack was immediately claimed by the Islamic group Jamat-ul-Ahrar, a faction of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), author of the Lahore massacre of 13 February and the Easter attack, also in Lahore, 27 March 2016.

The three attackers pretended to be filing petitions and so had free access to the court  building. The first was able to throw a grenade, while the other two have waged a gun battle with security guards. The timely intervention of the officers prevented a bloodbath, since at the time of the attack there were at least 40 people in the area, including four judges.

The attack is the latest in a new wave of violence that is spreading terror among the population. The reason for this resurgence is a retaliation against the Pakistani army and government, guilty of having carried out the operation that led to the killing of Abdul Rashid Ghazi in 2007, a fundamentalist leader of the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque), besieged for days by the army.

In a video released the day after the massacre in the Punjab Assembly in Lahore, the Taliban said: "The explosion is just the first in a long line of 'Ghazi' operations (Islamic warriors). We launch a warning to the apostates of Pakistan departments: they are our target of this operation throughout the country. "