KARACHI: Pakistan’s Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi said on Tuesday, “negotiations and terrorist attacks cannot proceed simultaneously,” as he briefed Acting US Ambassador Natalie Baker on a deadly suicide blast outside a district court in Islamabad and Pakistan’s ongoing counter-terrorism operations.
The Nov. 11 attack near the entrance of the court complex in the capital killed 12 people and wounded nearly three dozen. It was the first major suicide bombing in Islamabad in nearly three years and came amid a sharp rise in militant attacks across the country.
Pakistani authorities have since announced the arrest of several suspects linked to the bombing, saying they were part of a cell with connections to the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a Pakistani militant group separate from but ideologically aligned with the Afghan Taliban rulers in Kabul and responsible for hundreds of attacks across Pakistan over the past decade.
Officials, including Naqvi, have repeatedly accused Afghan nationals and sanctuaries across the border of involvement in recent attacks in the country, which have strained already fraught ties with Kabul, which denies the claims.
“Mohsin Naqvi emphasized that negotiations and terrorist attacks cannot proceed simultaneously,” the interior ministry said in a statement after Naqvi met Baker in Islamabad.
