South Asia

PESHAWAR: The Civil Secretariat in Peshawar was evacuated on Friday and all employees were told to leave their offices due to security concerns following a threat alert for the mosque inside the secretariat, according to sources. “We were told to leave immediately,” sources told Dawn. A senior secretariat official said security had been beefed up for almost three days, soon after the Kohat explosion. The official added that a threat alert had been issued for the mosque located inside the secretariat. On Sep 18, in a deadly two-pronged assault, at least 23 people, including 15 police officials, were martyred and over 100 were wounded when an explosives-laden vehicle detonated near a mosque in Kohat district’s old Police Lines, followed by terrorists storming the compound and attacking police facilities. Most of the attackers who managed to enter the compound following the explosion were killed within the first two hours of the attack. One assailant, however, managed to reach and hide inside a building within the compound. The following day, police said that an overnight clearance operation had been completed, with a total of eight terrorists being killed. A few days later, on Thursday, a Counter-Terrorism Department official was martyred and three others were wounded during an intelligence-based operation carried out against three suicide bombers in Garhi Sherdad area of Warsak road on the outskirts of the provincial capital.

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THE KP government is stuck in an unenviable spot. On one hand, the chief minister has taken it upon himself to keep the PTI alive and relevant, by channelling the considerable public sympathy behind it into tangible street power. On the other, he must lead a fightback against the resurgent wave of terrorism in his province, where casualties keep mounting. There is no easy choice for someone who is a provincial chief executive as well as a political leader; in fact, there is no choice at all. On Sunday, a day after he had announced putting off the opposition’s planned protest march to Islamabad, Chief Minister Sohail Afridi visited Dera Ismail Khan to check in with those wounded in a deadly gun-and-bomb attack in Darazinda over the weekend. The attack targeted a police and customs check-post and killed at least 12; militants then fired on an ambulance carrying the victims, killing two rescue workers. Accompanied by his predecessor, Ali Amin Khan Gandapur, he asked for his province’s input to be incorporated into the national counterterrorism policy, so it could “reflect the ground realities”. “Peace cannot be established without taking the people of KP into confidence,” he said. Mr Afridi complained about the non-provision of modern weapons and equipment from the centre despite payments being made. Unfortunately, he could not steer clear of politics and accused “some elements” in the federal government of polarising the country, while daring them to make good on the threat to impose governor’s rule in KP. Federal ministers responded on Monday, slamming the PTI government for “failing to provide leadership, resources or power” to the security forces. “If Pakistan is burning in the fire of terrorism, it is because of KP’s incompetent leadership,” the minister of state for interior remarked, sitting alongside the information minister. The state minister also accused the provincial government of having “a soft attitude” on Afghanistan. The information minister, meanwhile

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