At least 35 people have died and more than 200 have been injured in a suicide attack this Sunday during a rally of the Islamist party Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (JUI-F) in the city of Jar, located in the northwestern Pakistani province of Jiber Pakhtunjua. The provisional Minister of Information for that border region with Afghanistan, Firoz Shah Jamal, has confirmed this number of deaths and injuries in an interview with Pakistani television Geo News.
For its part, a police source has raised the death toll to at least 40 and the injured to 130: “The JUI-F organized a convention of workers in the city of Jar, in (the district of) Bajaur, in which 40 People have lost their lives and more than 130 have been injured,” a police spokesman, identified as Nazir Khan, told Reuters. For the moment, no insurgent group has claimed responsibility for the attack. The chief of the provincial police, Ajtar Hayat, has confirmed to that same agency that the attack was caused by a suicide bomber.
The explosion took place around four in the afternoon (noon in Spanish peninsular time), according to the Pakistani police, when several hundred people were attending the rally of the JUI-F, a religious-based conservative party, known for its links to the hardline Islamism. This formation is led by the cleric Fazal ur Rehman, one of the most prominent Islamist exponents in the country’s politics and a junior partner in the government coalition. A worker from the local emergency services, Saad Jan, has assured the Pakistani newspaper dawn, that among the deceased is Maulana Ziaullah Jan, one of the local leaders of the convening party.
Witnesses cited by the Pakistani press have described scenes of panic after the attack as first aid services and ambulances began to arrive at the scene. Rahim Shah, a witness quoted by the Dawn newspaper, has raised the number of attendees to the rally to more than 500 people. “We were listening to a speech when a loud explosion knocked me unconscious,” he recounted. When this man regained consciousness, there was blood everywhere, he claimed. “People were screaming and there were even shots,” he added.
Regional Minister Jamal has stated that hospitals in the city of Jar and neighboring areas have been placed on high alert: “We are trying to transfer critical patients to Peshawar and other hospitals with helicopters.”
“Our top priority right now is to provide medical treatment to the injured. The site of the explosion has been cordoned off. The Pakistani army and other institutions are helping us in the operation,” added Jamal.
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The head of Health for the Bajaur district, Faisal Kamal, has offered more details about the injured in statements to Pakistani media. Kamal stressed that more than 150 have been treated at Bajaur hospital, while those in critical condition were being transferred to Peshawar’s Lady Reading Hospital.
271 attacks in six months
Pakistan has experienced an increase in armed violence since the Taliban came to power in neighboring Afghanistan on August 15, 2021, which reactivated attacks by its Pakistani ideological brothers, especially in the Afghan border provinces of Khiber Pakhtunjua and Balochistan.
The main Pakistani insurgent group, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), announced last December the end of a ceasefire reached with the country’s government, which it accused of breaching its commitments in peace negotiations. The TTP pledged allegiance to the Afghan Taliban, but did not submit directly to their authority. The TTP is not the only group carrying out attacks in Pakistan, where a local branch of the Islamic State terrorist organization also operates.
During the first half of the year, the country has witnessed 271 attacks by armed militants. They killed 389 people and injured 656 others, according to a report published in early July by the Pakistan Institute for Security and Conflict Studies. These data represent a significant increase in figures compared to the same period in 2022, when Pakistan suffered 151 attacks that caused 293 deaths and 487 injuries.
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