- Thursday, April 25, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
A day after a deadly suicide bomb attack at a mosque in the city of Peshawar claimed more than 100 lives and injured several others, Pakistan’s defence minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif on Tuesday (31) said his country ‘had sowed seeds of terrorism’, the Dawn newspaper reported.
He also added that worshippers don’t meet such a sorry fate during prayers in countries such as India and Israel.
Most of the people killed in the explosion were policemen. It was reported that between 300-400 officers had gathered for afternoon prayers at the mosque on Monday (30) in the capital of Pakistan’s north-western province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa bordering Afghanistan when an entire wall and most of the mosque’s roof were blown off.
Speaking on the floor of the National Assembly, the lower chamber of the country’s parliament, Asif said, “I will not talk for long but I will brief say that at the start, we sowed seeds of terrorism.”
“Worshippers weren’t martyred during prayers even in India or Israel, but it happened in Pakistan,” he added.
The minister, who belongs to the PML-N political party and took charge in April last year as the defence minister for the second time, said the suicide bomber who caused the carnage was standing in the front while the prayer was underway.
The report also said that Asif questioned who would be held accountable for the blast.
He said the entire nation needed to come together against terrorism and only then the challenge could be fought against.
“Terrorism doesn’t differentiate between any religion or sect. Terrorism is used in the name of religion to take precious lives,” Asif was quoted by the Dawn as saying.
Speaking about the Russian invasion of neighbouring Afghanistan in the late 1970s, Asif said, “When Russia invaded Afghanistan, Pakistan offered its services to the United States on rent.”
“The agreement made with the US went on for eight to nine years, after which the US went back to Washington celebrating the fact that Russia was defeated. Pakistan was left to deal with the aftermath for the next 10 years,” he was quoted as saying by the newspaper.
“Once those 10 years passed, 9/11 happened. A threat was received from there and we got involved in another war,” he said.
The veteran leader said that Pakistan’s involvement in the two wars had spilled over into “our homes, our bazaars, our schools and public places”.
The blast in Peshawar was a targeted revenge attack, a top police officer from the country was told Reuters.
No group has officially claimed responsibility for the attack.
