Lahore: Less than 24 hours after a car exploded near Red Fort to kill 12 people, Pakistan was rocked by a major blast in Islamabad on Tuesday.
It was outside an Islamabad court that a powerful explosion ripped through a parked vehicle, with several lawyers among 12 deceased and 25 injured victims.
Even as Pakistani officials said it was a suicide attack, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif turned to India and blamed its neighbouring country for the killer Islamabad explosion.
Sharif also alleged New Delhi’s role in Monday’s attack on a cadet college in Wana, near the border with Afghanistan.
Sharif blamed “Indian-sponsored terrorist proxies” for the twin attacks, the Associated Press of Pakistan (APP) reported. “These attacks are a continuation of India’s state-sponsored terrorism aimed at destabilising Pakistan,” Sharif he was quoted by APP as saying on Tuesday.
Pakistan is widely considered to be one of the hubs of global terrorism and an exporter of terrorism. India has time and again exposed Pakistan as a terrorism-backing nation, but Sharif’s allegation against New Delhi was sans any proof.
Sharif said while “Indian-backed militants” struck in Islamabad, the same network operating from Afghan territory also attacked innocent children in Wana. “No condemnation is enough for these attacks being carried out from Afghan soil under Indian patronage,” the Pakistani PM said.
‘State of war’
Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said the country was “in a state of war”. He described the latest “suicide bombing” near Islamabad District Judicial Complex as a “wake-up call” for the nation.
Khawaja didn’t point fingers at India, but directly blamed the regime in Kabul for the blast. He warned that the “war” between Afghanistan and Pakistan was no longer confined to the border region, the Durand Line.
“We are in a state of war. Anyone who thinks that the Pakistan Army is fighting this war in the Afghan-Pakistan border region and the remote areas of Balochistan should take today’s suicide attack at the Islamabad district courts as a wake-up call: this is a war for all of Pakistan, in which the Pakistan Army is giving daily sacrifices and making the people feel secure,” Khawaja wrote on X.
