At least 43 people were killed and 200 wounded on Sunday in a blast at a political rally in northwest Pakistan.
The explosion occurred in the Khyber Pakhtunnkhwa province and was set off by a suicide bomber, provincial police chief Akhtar Hayat Khan told local media. The rally was organized by the Islamist Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl party, and one of its local leaders, Maulana Ziaullah, was killed in the blast.
Officials believe Islamic State Khorasan, an ISIS affiliate, could be behind the bombing, as the group previously targeted Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl due to its relationship with the Taliban in Afghanistan, The New York Times reported. Islamic State Khorasan, also known as ISIS-K, does not think the Taliban is strict enough.
Earlier this year, Pakistani Taliban militants attacked a mosque in Peshawar and launched an assault against the police headquarters in Karachi. Asfandyar Mir, a senior expert at the United States Institute of Peace, told the Times that Sunday's bombing "is yet another reminder that militancy remains ascendant in Pakistan and insecurity is likely to rise in the coming months." Groups like ISIS-K and the Pakistani Taliban, Mir added, "are trying to carve out space for themselves in the country, and that creates incentives for each of these groups to try to distinguish themselves" through their attacks.
