PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Feb 1 (Reuters) – Pakistani police investigating how a suicide bomber reached a mosque inside a extremely fortified compound and killed over 100 folks mentioned on Wednesday the attacker might have had “inside help”, and that a number of suspects had been arrested.

Monday’s bombing was the deadliest in a decade to hit Peshawar, a restive northwestern metropolis vulnerable to Islamist militant violence close to the Afghan border.

All however three of these killed have been law enforcement officials, making it the worst assault on Pakistani safety forces in latest historical past, and probably the most deadly in a latest surge of violence that has focused police within the frontier Khyber Pashtunkhwa province.

“Now we have discovered some wonderful clues, and primarily based on these clues we now have made some main arrests,” Peshawar Police Chief Ijaz Khan informed Reuters. “We won’t rule out inside help however for the reason that investigation remains to be in progress, I will be unable to share extra particulars.”

The bomber struck as lots of of worshippers gathered for midday prayers in a mosque that was purpose-built for the police and their households dwelling in a extremely fortified zone.

Investigators, together with counter-terrorism and intelligence officers, are specializing in how the attacker managed to breach the navy and police checkpoints main into the Police Strains district, a colonial-era, self-contained encampment in Peshawar metropolis centre that homes middle- and lower-ranking police personnel and their households.

The assault has rattled the drive, prompting unprecedented protests by police personnel throughout the province.

“How lengthy will this injustice towards us final?” one of many protesters, who was sporting a bulletproof vest, informed reporters. One other group of policemen in Peshawar chanted: “We wish peace.”

Peshawar sits on the sting of the Pashtun tribal lands, a area mired in violence for the previous 20 years. Probably the most lively militant group within the space, the Pakistani Taliban, additionally referred to as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), has not too long ago elevated assaults on the police as a part of its marketing campaign towards the federal government in Islamabad.

The TTP has denied duty for the mosque assault, which no group has claimed to this point. Provincial Police Chief Moazzam Jah Ansari informed Reuters he suspected a breakaway faction of the TTP referred to as Jamat-ul-Ahrar was concerned. Stays of the bomber had additionally been recovered, he added.

The assault was the deadliest in Peshawar since twin suicide bombings at All Saints Church killed scores of worshippers in September 2013, in what stays the worst strike on the nation’s Christian minority.

Amongst Monday’s lifeless was Irfan Khan, a father of 5. “I miss my father very a lot,” Khan’s son Arsalan, 11, informed Reuters because the household accepted condolences at their residence. “I noticed my father for the final time on Friday. I’ll by no means see him once more.”

Reporting by Jibran Ahmad in Peshawar and Asif Shahzad and Sheree Sardar in Islamabad; writing by Miral Fahmy; enhancing by Simon Cameron-Moore and Mark Heinrich

Our Requirements: The Thomson Reuters Belief Ideas.