A senior Pakistan police official on Friday said that the Counter Terrorism Department of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province had arrested the prime suspect in the suicide bomb attack on a Peshawar mosque that killed over a hundred people.
The additional inspector general of police of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Shaukat Abbas, also blamed a splinter group of the TTP for the attack that left scores of policemen dead.
The official attributed the incident to TTP's Jamaat-ul-Ahrar's faction.
"The bomber who carried out the attack is known as 'Qari' in the TTP circles," the official said at a press conference.
Abbas added that the police had successfully identified the mastermind of the attack, whom he named as Ghaffar, alias Salman.
"We have found that Ghaffar was in contact with the suicide bomber on the day of the incident. We are trying to apprehend the handler and mastermind of the attack," Abbas stated.
Meanwhile, the suspect who was apprehended was the backup suicide bomber, as per the Pakistan police official.
On January 30, a suicide bomber detonated himself in a mosque located in the high-security zone of Peshawar. The powerful explosion took place at a time when police officers had arrived at the mosque for their afternoon prayers.
Since the TTP unilaterally ended its ceasefire with the federal government in November 2022, Pakistan has witnessed a surge in violent militant attacks, especially against its security forces.
Since the resumption of hostilities, the TTP has claimed 58 attacks, leaving 170 people dead.
* a terrorist organization banned in Russia