PESHAWAR: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said militants behind a spate of suicide attacks in Pakistan were being helped by Afghan citizens, as the death toll from last week's bomb blast in Pakistan's northwestern Bajaur district rose to 63 on Wednesday.
Sharif's statement follows Sunday's suicide bomb attack in Khar town in Bajaur district which targeted a convention organized by Pakistan's right-wing Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (Fazl) party. The attack was claimed by Daesh.
Islamabad has previously said fighters from the Pakistan Taliban were operating freely from Afghanistan — a charge Kabul routinely denies. On Tuesday, Pakistan's Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari said Islamabad can take action in "self-defense" against militants hiding in Afghanistan if the Afghan authorities fail to hold them responsible.
In a statement released from his office late Tuesday, Sharif stopped short of accusing Afghanistan’s Taliban government of knowingly allowing attacks from its soil, but he did say Pakistan militants were operating from “sanctuaries” in the neighboring country.
“The Prime Minister noted with concern the involvement of the Afghan citizens in the suicide blasts,” the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) quoted him as saying.
The statement also said there was “liberty of action available to the elements hostile to Pakistan in planning and executing such cowardly attacks on innocent civilians from the sanctuaries across the border.”
Meanwhile, Bajaur District Health Officer (DHO) Faisal Karim said the death toll from the blast had increased.
"We are collecting the data, 63 people were killed and 123 others were injured in the blast," Karim told Arab News. He added that some of the victims' bodies which were recognized by relatives had been buried.
Meanwhile, Bajaur Police Spokesperson Muhammad Israr said authorities were facing difficulties in identifying victims of the blast. "All police stations in district Bajaur are been informed to trace and collect the data of those who were killed in the blast," Israr told Arab News, adding that he feared the toll would rise further.
Since the Taliban surged back to power in Afghanistan two years ago, Pakistan has witnessed a dramatic uptick in militant attacks focused on its western border regions.
