Caretaker Interior Minister Sarfraz Ahmed Bugti on Saturday vowed to pursue militant groups operating in Pakistan and eliminate their safe havens, as he accused India’s premier spy agency, Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), of orchestrating recent suicide bombings in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces which claimed 65 lives.
Bugti’s statement came just a day after a suicide explosion took place near a gathering to mark the birth anniversary of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) in Balochistan’s Mastung area, killing at least 60 people.
In another attack that took place later in the day, militants targeted a mosque at a police station in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Hangu district to kill five more people.
No group claimed responsibility for the attacks, though the proscribed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) network distanced itself from the Friday attacks and denied involvement by issuing a public statement.
“Whether it is Daesh or TTP or anyone else, anyone committing violence under any banner, violence will only be exercised by the state,” the minister told a news conference in Quetta after attending a security meeting.
“All major incidents that occurred in Balochistan were not without RAW’s involvement along with the forces that seek to destabilize Pakistan,” he continued.
Bugti did not provide any evidence of Indian involvement in the recent attacks in Pakistan, though officials in Islamabad have always suspected New Delhi of orchestrating such incidents in the country.
“We will go after the terrorists and eliminate all their dens … We know who is handling all these terrorists,” he said. “We have decidedly that there will be zero tolerance for these terrorists.”