- ‘Army making gains in breaking connectivity between masterminds, executors’
Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Qamar Javed Bajwa chaired security meeting at the Corps Headquarters to get updated on the Radd-ul-Fasaad security operation and the blast on the Ferozpur Road in Lahore.
Expressing his grief with victims and their families, the army chief said that such incidents cannot lower resolve to eliminate terrorism from its roots. “We are making gains in breaking connectivity between terror masterminds and their facilitators/executors,” he said.
He said that the army fully supports and stands with police and other law enforcement agencies towards the performance of their role as first responders. “We have fought against terrorism as a nation and key to success is national participation by reporting every suspicious activity to security forces,” he said.
General Bajwa said that regional actors and hostile intelligence agencies were fully involved in using terror as policy tool. Concurrent blasts at Kabul and Lahore were a testimony of the stance that both Pakistan and Afghanistan were victims of terrorism and would continue to suffer if these actors were able to use Afghanistan territory with impunity.
He reiterated that Pakistan was ready to help Afghanistan to eliminate terrorist safe heavens in their border areas as “we have done on our side,” he said. Later, the army chief visited injured of the blast at the General Hospital. Lahore Corps Commander Lieutenant General Sadiq Ali and Inspector General of Police Punjab were also present.
The army chief was given a briefing on the nature of injuries by the hospital’s medical superintendent. Around 26 people, including nine policemen, were martyred and over 60 injured when a suicide bomber blew himself up near Lahore’s Ferozepur Road on Monday afternoon.
