Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said on Thursday that the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), with support from elements inside Afghanistan and India, was responsible for recent terrorist attacks in Pakistan.
He made these remarks while talking to the media at Parliament House where he mentioned that Islamabad had been warning for months that the TTP could not carry out incidents of this scale without the 'support' of the Kabul government.
The minister highlighted investigators had found Afghan nationals among those involved in an earlier attack. “The identities of Afghan nationals have been established,” he added. “The evidence is now before the whole world to see and the onus of action now falls on Kabul.”
Asif accused Afghanistan of providing material support for terrorism and said India was also backing those efforts “so that peace cannot be established in Pakistan.”
Defending the state’s response, the defence minister said Pakistan had already prevailed in past conflicts and would defeat terrorism similarly.
“We have won the war against the enemy, and we will win the war against terrorism as well,” he said, adding a stark warning to militants: “We will pursue them to the last corner of the earth and we will annihilate them.”
The minister’s comments came on the heels of a terrorist attack in Islamabad Judicial Complex.
