By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Authorities said on Friday that security forces have arrested four members of the banned militant group Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, including the commander of the cell responsible for this week’s suicide bombing at a judicial complex in the capital.
The Interior Ministry said the suspects were taken into custody in a joint operation by the Intelligence Bureau’s Islamabad Division and the Counter-Terrorism Department. All four men, it said, belonged to the TTP network that carried out the attack at the Judicial Complex in the G-11 sector. “In a joint operation conducted by the Intelligence Bureau Division and the Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD), four members of the TTP/Fitna al-Khawarij terrorist cell involved in the suicide attack at the Judicial Complex G-11, Islamabad have been apprehended,” the ministry wrote in a series of posts on X.
The ministry said the cell had been “handled and guided at every step” by senior TTP commanders based in Afghanistan. “The entire cell involved in the incident, including its commander and three other members, has been arrested,” the statement continued. “Investigations are continuing, and more revelations and arrests are expected.”
A day earlier, interior minister Mohsin Naqvi told the Senate that the suicide bomber who killed 12 people and wounded 35 in an attack on the capital’s judicial complex was “related to Afghanistan”. He described the Afghan connection as a “very serious” development and said he had briefed Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar and Defense Minister Khawaja Asif. He linked the Islamabad bombing to a separate suicide attack on Nov. 10 at Cadet College Wana in South Waziristan, saying the bomber in that incident had also come from Afghanistan.
“It is becoming very difficult for us; the way people from Afghanistan are coming here and attacking us,” Naqvi said. He added that the government would do “whatever is possible” to address the problem and was continuing to expel undocumented Afghans from the country.
The Islamabad blast, which tore through the parking area of the district courts complex in the heavily guarded F-8 sector, came at a moment of unusual diplomatic activity in the capital. Parliament was hosting an Inter-Parliamentary Speakers’ Conference, the Islamabad Policy Research Institute was holding its annual Margalla Dialogue, and a Pakistan-Sri Lanka cricket test match was underway in nearby Rawalpindi. The same day, a roadside bomb struck a security forces convoy in Dera Ismail Khan in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, wounding at least 14 personnel.
One day earlier to the blast, militants had stormed the cadet college in Wana; security forces killed all the attackers after a prolonged operation that cost the lives of three Pakistani personnel but ended with every cadet and teacher safely evacuated.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, responding to the spate of attacks, accused both Afghanistan and India of involvement in terrorism inside Pakistan and promised a “befitting response.” Defense Minister Asif, speaking hours after the capital bombing, called the strike a “wake-up call” for those who believed the military’s counterterrorism fight was confined to the Afghan border and remote corners of Balochistan .“We are in a state of war,” Asif said, expressing little optimism about negotiations with the Taliban authorities in Kabul.
On Wednesday, investigators detained a motorcycle taxi driver from an online ride-hailing service who had dropped the bomber outside the court complex. Police traced the rider through CCTV footage and the digital payment he received for the fare. On Thursday, the Counter-Terrorism Department in Rawalpindi announced the arrest of seven suspected facilitators in raids in the city’s Fauji Colony and Dhoke Kashmirian areas, as well as one operation in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
No group has claimed responsibility for the Islamabad bombing, but officials have repeatedly blamed the TTP, which operates from sanctuaries inside Afghanistan and has sharply escalated attacks since the Afghan Taliban returned to power in 2021. Kabul has consistently denied sheltering the TTP and accused Islamabad of failing to control its own territory.
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