Pakistan on Saturday said that it would provide evidence of Afghanistan’s soil being used to plan and execute the deadly Taliban attack on a military camp in Peshawar on Friday, as the Afghan government vehemently rejected Pakistan Army’s claims that the attack in Peshawar was planned and controlled from Afghanistan.
“Evidence is being collected to prove Pakistan’s claims that the outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan had planned the attack from Afghanistan,” Prime Minister’s National Security Adviser Sartaj Aziz said in a televised statement on Saturday. Aziz said that both countries shared the responsibility for eliminating terrorism from their respective areas.
“Afghanistan must ensure implementation of the points agreed during Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s visit to Afghanistan,” he said, stressing on the need for coordinated efforts and enhanced intelligence sharing between the two governments to stem terrorism on both sides of the border.
“Mutual cooperation will help establish long-term peace in the region,” he said.
AFGHANISTAN DOES NOT CONDONE TERRORISM:
Meanwhile in a statement issued from the Afghan Presidential Palace, a spokesman said that the Afghan government “has never, nor will it ever allow its territory to be used against other countries”.
“Afghanistan, as a victim of terrorism, feels the agony and pain of terrorism, and commiserates in that spirit with the victims of yesterday’s attack in Peshawar,” said the statement.
It further stated that Afghanistan’s government believes that “terrorism is the enemy of humanity and there are no good and bad terrorists”. Therefore, the regional states, particularly Afghanistan and Pakistan, should continue putting in joint and sincere efforts to eliminate this heinous phenomenon, it asserted.
“The military operations of Pakistan in Waziristan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) have had consequences both for Afghanistan and Pakistan,” the Afghan president’s office said.
“The Afghan government has put in a lot of effort in recent years to fight terrorism and it once again calls on Pakistan to jointly fight alongside Afghanistan against all terrorist groups without discrimination so that peace and stability is ensured in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the region.”
Earlier, Director General Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Major-General Asim Bajwa had said that the attack on Pakistan Air Force (PAF) Badaber camp on Friday morning was planned and controlled from Afghanistan.
Twenty-nine people, among them personnel of the Pakistan Air Force and military and some civilians, lost their lives and all 13 militants who had stormed the camp were also killed, Bajwa said. The ISPR spokesperson said that 29 people were also wounded during predawn the attack.
The Darra Adamkhel chapter of the banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan claimed responsibility for the attack.
Built by the United States in the late 1950s to eavesdrop on Soviet communications and conduct air surveillance on the Soviet Union, Badaber is no longer an operation camp. It now serves mainly as a residential area housing quarters for PAF personnel and a public school.
In a five-minute, twenty-nine seconds video sent to reporters on Friday, the TTP group’s leader Khalifa Mansoor alias Omar Naray is seen bidding farewell to a group of 16 militants which, it said, was departing for the attack on the PAF camp.
The group now based in Afghanistan was also behind the attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar in December last year which left 145 people dead, 136 of them students.
