15 killed in Pak terror attacks
Taliban faction JamaatulAhrar claims strikes
A suicide bombing by the Jamaat-ul-Ahrar at a court complex in northwest Pakistan killed 13 people and injured more than 50 on Friday, hours after troops foiled an assault by the groupon a Christian colony near Peshawar by killing four attackers.
The Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a breakaway faction of the Tehrike-Taliban Pakistan that has targeted Christians and the legal community in the past, claimed responsibility for both attacks.
Its spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan promised more attacks. “We appeal to civilians to remain away from law enforcement installations and these un-Islamic courts. We will target them more,” he told Reuters.
Six lawyers and two policemen were among the 13 people who died at the court complex in Mardan city of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.
A small blast was followed by a bigger explosion, chief rescue officer Haris Habib told the media.
Habib said the civil defence had rescued 52 injured people, including lawyers, police personnel and civilians.
The attacker lobbed a grenade before detonating his explosive vest at the main gate of the court complex, police officials said. They said the suicide bomber had seven to eight kilograms of explosives attached to his body.
Earlier in the day, four terrorists wearing suicide vests were killed during a failed attack on a Christian colony near Warsak dam on the outskirts of Peshawar, the capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.
A security guard and a resident of the colony were also killed. The terrorists tried to enter the Christian colony, where an army air defence unit is also stationed.
The Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, which briefly declared allegiance to the Islamic State in 2014 but recently said it was no longer affiliated with the group, also carried out the Easter Sunday attack on Christians in a park in Lahore that killed 72 people, including 29 children, and injured more than 300.