Pakistan will launch a special paramilitary crackdown in Punjab, the country’s richest and most populous province, after an Easter Day bombing in the eastern city of Lahore killed 70 people, government and military sources told Reuters on Monday.
The move represents the civilian government once again granting special powers to the military in order to fight Islamist militants.
The crackdown would give paramilitary Rangers extraordinary powers to conduct raids and interrogate suspects similar to those the Rangers have used for more than two years in the southern city of Karachi, said a senior security official based in Lahore.
“The technicalities are yet to be worked out. There are some legal issues also with bringing in Rangers, but the military and government are on the same page,” he told Reuters, on condition of anonymity as he was not authorised to share details of the plan.
One other military official and two government officials confirmed the decision on condition of anonymity.
Pakistani authorities on Monday hunted members of a Taliban faction which once declared loyalty to Islamic State after the group claimed responsibility for an Easter suicide bomb targeting Christians.
The brutality of Sunday’s attack by Jamaat-ur-Ahrar, the group’s fifth bombing since December, reflects the movement’s attempts to raise its profile among Pakistan’s increasingly fractured Islamist militants.
At least 29 children enjoying an Easter weekend outing were among those killed when the suicide bomber struck in a busy park in the eastern city of Lahore, the power base of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Pakistan is a majority-Muslim state but has a Christian population of more than two million.
It was Pakistan’s deadliest attack since the December 2014 massacre of 134 school children in Peshawar that prompted a big government crackdown on Islamist militancy.
Military spokesman Gen Asim Bajwa said intelligence agencies, the army and paramilitary Rangers had launched several raids around Punjab following the attack.
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