Pakistan capital hit by first suicide bombing in 8 years

Bloomberg

A suicide bomber and his accomplice detonated explosives in Pakistan’s capital when police tried to check their vehicle, killing themselves, one policeman and injuring five people.
The incident, the first such attack in Islamabad in more than eight years, took place in a neighbourhood close to the garrison town of Rawalpindi, local police said on Twitter. An attack in 2014 in a court complex had killed 10 people.
Separately, Deputy Inspector General of Islamabad Police, Sohail Zafar Chatta, told reporters that a woman was accompanying the attacker in the vehicle. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan(TTP), an extremisst group with links to the Afghan Taliban, has claimed responsibility for the blast, the Dawn newspaper reported.
The attack comes less than a month after the TTP ended a ceasefire with the government in Islamabad and announced a resumption of attacks across the nation. The ceasefire, brokered by the Taliban-run government in Afghanistan, had been in place since May this year.
With the Taliban in control of Afghanistan, Islamabad has been concerned that a spillover in terror activities could affect investments, including China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Pakistan has already faced pressure from Beijing, which called on the government to protect such projects after a bus explosion in July last year killed
12 workers, including nine
Chinese citizens.
According to the Islamabad-based Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies, extremist violence spiked by 24% in the first eleven months of this year compared with the same period in 2021.