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Analyst to Press TV: US responsible for terrorist bombing at Shia mosque in Pakistan

A general view of the prayer hall after a bomb blast inside a mosque during Friday prayers in Peshawar, Pakistan, on March 4, 2022. (Photo by Reuters)

An analyst has blamed the United States for the recent Daesh-claimed bombing that killed more than 60 worshipers at a Shia mosque in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar, saying it was Washington that created the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group in the first place.

“I think what is important is what is the root of this and I think often at times when we talk about analytics, we have to understand where the root of the problem presided from and where ISIS (Daesh) came from,” Syed Muaz Shah, director of Center for Human Rights with Ziauddin University, told Press TV in an interview on Sunday.

He went on to say that the little-known terrorist group Daesh-K, which is an offshoot of Daesh, “was not native to the region and it was formulated around 2014-15” following the events in Syria and Iraq.   

Shah further questioned the meeting of US officials with Daesh leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in the early days of Syrian war, saying there is “a connection that eventually formulates until when he declared a caliphate” with its capital in Raqqah and the ensuing invasion of Iraq.

“It was in these events that were going on in Iraq and the spread of ISIS (Daesh) that certain elements across the world were introduced,” he said.

Elsewhere in his remarks, the analyst noted that what’s interesting about the Daesh-K is that one of its initial leaders, Abdul Rauf Aliza, was a Guantanamo Bay detainee and the Americans released him while they have still kept many people there.

“So you often see this connection that the holding facilities are controlled by the Americans that kept these people and what’s going on in that, we don’t know, and then these mysterious engagements with certain US authorities, like I said, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has a very famous person when he met [US] Senator [John] McCain in Syria,” he said.

“So these types of things actually raise a lot of questions as to who is behind ISIS (Daesh),” he said, adding that what needs to be discussed is how to counter their influence.

On Friday, a deadly blast took place as worshipers gathered in the Kucha Risaldar mosque in Peshawar’s old city area for congregational Friday prayers.

The Takfiri Daesh terrorist group claimed responsibility for the bombing attack on its Amaq propaganda site.

The incident was the deadliest terrorist attack in the country since 2018, when 149 people lost their lives — including nine children — in a terrorist explosion at an election rally in the southwestern province of Balochistan.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) strongly condemned the suicide bomb blast and said it was intended to target Shia worshipers.

Many anti-Shia terrorist groups are active in the South Asian country. Both Daesh and Tehreek e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) have previously carried out similar attacks in the region, located near the border with Afghanistan.


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