Islamic State targets Sufi shrine in Pakistan suicide bombing
The Islamic State’s Khorasan province claimed credit for today’s suicide bombing at a Sufi shrine in Sindh province, Pakistan that killed at least 70 people and wounded scores more.
The Islamic State’s Khorasan province claimed credit for today’s suicide bombing at a Sufi shrine in Sindh province, Pakistan that killed at least 70 people and wounded scores more.
Jamaat-ul-Ahrar claimed that attack, which killed at least 10 people and wounded scores more, under Operation Ghazi. The operation targets all factions of the Pakistani state.
The video, from Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a powerful faction of the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan, highlights the training of suicide bombers and an assault on a Pakistani military base that took place last November.
While the competing claims cannot be verified, both groups are capable of executing the mass-casualty suicide attack in Quetta.
Jamaat-ul-Ahrar has been behind numerous deadly attacks inside Pakistan and is closely allied with the Afghan Taliban and al Qaeda. In 2014 it celebrated al Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks on the US and said it would fight until an Islamic caliphate “is established in every nook and corner of the world,” it concluded.
“With regret the Muslim world has lost a great mentor,” Jamaat-ul-Ahrar spokesman Ihsannullah Ihsan said, referring to Mansour. He urged “the Mujahideen and all Muslims” not to grieve too long, and to “focus on fighting” their enemies.
“The target was Christians,” the official spokesman of the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan Jamaat-ul-Ahrar said after a suicide bomber killed more than 70 people, mostly women and children, at a park in Lahore.
The spokesman for the Jamaat-ul-Ahrar faction of the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan said it “will avenge” the death of Shahidullah Shahid “from the Americans and its allies.” He also claimed a peace council was formed to mediate the dispute between the Islamic State and the Afghan Taliban.