Pakistan shrine attacker bypassed security check: Police

The police in Pakistan's Sindh province released a video allegedly showing the Sehwan attacker bypassing a security check at the Lal Shahbaz Qalandar shrine last week.

The suicide attack targeting a Sufi shrine on February 16 killed at least 88 people and injured hundreds others. It is one among a deadly series of attacks carried out by militants in recent weeks.

Inspector General Police Sindh A.D. Khawaja was quoted by the Dawn on Sunday as saying during a press conference that the man shown in the CCTV footage was "99 per cent" the suicide bomber.

He described the man as an Afghan national, saying that the 'attacker' saw the police officer at the gate and decided to go the other way.

The attacker is suspected of involvement in the Shikarpur and Jacobabad blasts, the IGP said, adding that the involvement of a man named Hafeez Brohi in the Sehwan attack could not be ruled out, as he had a terrorist network in Sindh.

The IGP said that police have arrested one man in connection to the Sehwan carnage in Johi, a town in Sindh's Dadu district. The suspected facilitator has been shifted to an undisclosed location for further investigation, he added.

The Sindh government will have the case investigated through Sindh police's Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD), as was done in suicide bombings in Jacobabad during Ashura and at Shikarpur's shrine, and then again last year in Shikarpur on the second day of Eidul Azha.

Sehwan police had lodged a case on February 17 against one suicide bomber and three facilitators involved in the suicide bombing. The accused remained unidentified.

The shrine has now been opened for the general public.

--IANS

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