Islamabad: At least 12 people, including the mastermind, have been arrested in connection with last week’s suicide bombing that killed five Chinese nationals and their Pakistani driver in the restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan, officials said.
The Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD), which launched a probe into the attack, blamed the banned Tehreeke-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militant group for the assault, Express Tribune newspaper reported. No group had claimed responsibility for the terror attack that took place when the Chinese engineers were en route from Islamabad to their camp in Dasu, the headquarters of the Upper Kohistan district of the province, when a suicide bomber rammed his explosive-rigged car into their vehicle in Bisham area of Shangla district.
A report submitted by CTD said over a dozen militants and facilitators of the attack were arrested in multiple raids carried out by authorities. CTD sources said authorities arrested Hazrat Bilal, the mastermind of the attack who brought the suicide bomber from Afghanistan. Bilal is also wanted in prior attacks on the Chinese.
The report said the explosives-laden vehicle was brought through the Chaman border to Dara Zinda town in Dera Ismail Khan district for Pakistani Rs 0.25 million. Two facilitators were also arrested from Balochistan, the report said. The report said some of those arrested had links with TTP militants in Pakistan and that raids were still going across the country.
