No one initially claimed responsibility for the attack, in which 200 people were also injured. The preliminary investigation pointed to the regional affiliate of the Islamic State group, according to police.
All the victims belonged to the Jamiat Ulema Islam party, led by the strict cleric and politician Fazlur Rehman. He did not attend the rally, held in a large tent near a market in Bajur, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which borders Afghanistan.
The extremist group’s regional affiliate, called Islamic State in Khorasan Province, is based in nearby Afghan province of Nangarhar and is a rival to the Afghan Taliban. Bajur was a stronghold of the Pakistani Taliban, close allies of the Afghan Taliban government, prior to several Pakistani military campaigns that ended in 2016 and which claimed to have driven them from the area.
The cleric’s supporters had gathered in Bajut on Sunday as the party prepared for parliamentary elections, scheduled for October or November when the current five-year term ends.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif was expected to dissolve parliament in August ahead of the vote. Rehman’s party is part of Sharif’s coalition government, which came to power in April 2022 by ousting Prime Minister Imran Khan in a vote of no confidence.
Khan condemned the attack on Sunday as condolences raged across the country. Dozens of people who suffered minor injuries were released from hospital, while the seriously injured were flown to the city of Peshawar by military helicopters. The death toll of 44 reported on Sunday rose to 45 on Monday when a seriously injured man died in hospital, according to doctor Gul Naseeb.
Sharif called Rehman to express his condolences and assure the cleric that those who orchestrated the attack would be punished. The attack drew condemnation across the country, with both government and opposition parties offering condolences to the families of the victims. The US and Russian embassies in Islamabad condemned the attack.
Abdul Rasheed, a leader of Rehman’s party, said the blast was intended to weaken the party, but “these attacks cannot deter our resolve.”
The Pakistani Taliban also distanced itself from the event. The outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, said the attack was intended to pit Islamists against each other. Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Afghan Taliban, posted on the X social network, formerly known as Twitter, that “crimes like this cannot be justified in any way.”
FOUNTAIN: Associated Press
