As the death toll from the incident reached 45, Islamic State on Monday claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing at a political event in northwest Pakistan organized by a religious group supporting the government.
The conservative Jamiat Ulema Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) party, which is well-known for its ties to extreme Islamists but rejects terrorists attempting to topple the Pakistani government, was there when the bomber hit on Sunday.
In the lead-up to a national election in November, the incident in northwest Pakistan’s Bajaur region, close to the Afghan border, heightened security fears. On Monday, the ferocious terrorist organization Islamic State released a message on its Telegram channel in which it claimed responsibility for the attack.
The Islamic State’s Amaq agency said on Telegram that the assault “comes in the natural context of the ongoing war waged by the Islamic State against ‘democracy’ as a regime hostile to true Islam and in conflict with its divine law.”
The death toll has increased to 45, according to Bilal Faizi, a representative of a government-run rescue organization. 61 of the more than 130 injured persons were receiving treatment, according to government health advisor Riaz Anwar. The bomb was condemned as an assault on the democratic process by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.
The major parties’ months-long struggle and allegations of military meddling in civil politics, which the military rejects, have already cast a pall over the election’s prospects. The first part of August marks the end of the government’s term, following which elections—whose lead-up is often jam-packed with political rallies and campaigning—must be conducted before early November.
Former Pakistani counterterrorism commander Khawaja Khalid Farooq told Reuters: “A justification for delaying the election can strengthen if a series of such attacks continue to take place.” “Such targeted attacks may have an impact on the performance and electioneering campaign of affected political parties.”
Since the collapse of a truce between the Pakistani Taliban, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and the government last year, Islamist terrorist assaults in Pakistan have increased. More than 100 people were murdered in a Peshawar mosque attack that was claimed by a TTP breakaway group in January. But since a 2018 election campaign, Sunday’s bombing was the bloodiest to target a political event.
While the majority of the recent assaults have been carried out by the TTP and related organizations, the group has disassociated itself from Sunday’s incident, with a spokesperson denouncing it. Given its limited foothold in Pakistan, Islamic State strikes of this size are less frequent than those by the TTP.
The gang, which originally gained popularity in Iraq, has remained more active in neighboring Afghanistan thanks to a local branch. In Pakistan, it carried out its last significant assault on a mosque in 2022. The Tehreek-e-Jihad Pakistan, another recent terrorist organization about which little is known, has carried out a number of strikes around the nation, killing 12 troops at a military installation earlier this month.
The JUI and its leader Maulana Fazl-ur-Rehman have faced criticism in the past for standing up to Pakistani Islamist terrorists, whose violent struggle against the government they claim does not qualify as a real Jihad – a war against Islam’s foes. Nevertheless, the party backs the Afghan Taliban movement.
