Terrorism still not completely rooted out from the country: Bilawal

QUETTA: Pakistan People’s Party Chairman Bilawal Bhutto says the backbone of terrorism is still not broken despite earlier assertions of the militancy being wiped out of the country.

Arriving in Quetta to offer condolences to the family of Siraj Raisani, the PPP chairman said the election campaign is being conducted in an environment of insecurity.

He said, “The terrorists will be defeated by the power of the nation’s vote on July 25 as voters won’t be intimidated by their constant attacks”. He further said that in spite of the fact that the nation was told that the terrorists have been dealt with, their attacks persist just before the elections.

He asserted that he did not wish to comment on politics further, because the time and place were not appropriate for such statements.

A suicide bomber killed over 130 people at an election rally in southwestern Pakistan in the second election-related attack on past Friday.

The bombing was the most deadly attack in Pakistan in over three years and is the third incident of election-related violence in the past week.

Among those killed in Friday’s attack was Balochistan’s provincial assembly candidate Siraj Raisani, whose brother Nawab Aslam Raisani had served as the provincial chief minister from 2008 to 2013.

Raisani is the second electoral candidate to be killed in pre-election violence last week. A bomb blast killed four people in Bannu when it struck the campaign convoy of Akram Khan Durrani, a leader of Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, who remained unharmed in the attack.

In an earlier attack in Peshawar’s Yakatoot area, Awami National Party’s candidate Haroon Bilour was killed along with 21 other people.