New Delhi, (Samajweekly) Pakistan Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid said on Tuesday that the attack on police precinct in Islamabad was an “act of terrorism, not robbery”, which signals the onset of terrorism in the federal capital, the Express Tribune reported.
A day earlier, a police officer was killed and two others were injured in a rare shootout in Islamabad. According to the police, both the attackers were killed.
Speaking to the media on Tuesday, the minister said this was the first incident of terror of the current year and “we need to be very alert”.
Earlier, the minister ordered an inquiry into the incident, a rare security breach in the heavily guarded capital, which was home to dozens of embassies.
While no group has claimed responsibility for the attack, the country is battling a resurgence of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) following the group’s return to power in Afghanistan last year, the report said.
The federal government had announced late last year that it entered a month-long truce with the TTP, facilitated by Afghanistan’s Taliban, but that expired on December 9 after peace talks failed to make progress.
The TTP was responsible for hundreds of suicide bomb attacks and kidnappings across the country, and for a while held sway over vast tracts of the nation’s rugged tribal belt, imposing a radical version of Islamic law.
