WAGAH: Pakistan and India held their traditional flag-lowering ceremony at their shared border crossing yesterday , just 24 hours after a suicide bombing killed more than 50 spectators who had come to watch the nightly event.
Earlier, the Indian home ministry had said they had agreed to a Pakistani request to suspend the ritual held at the Wagah border crossing near Lahore in order to honour those killed in one of the worst terrorist attacks in Pakistan for months.
Instead, the elaborately choreographed display went ahead with troops on both sides noisily marching and stamping around in front of the only crossing point on the long border between the two countries.
The display, which attracted several hundred Pakistanis, was widely seen as a much-needed act of defiance against the terror group that sent a suicide bomber to target the huge crowds of people as they left the event on Sunday.
Police said the device used appeared to be a bomb belt studded with shrapnel. Pakistani police said they had recovered a “huge” cache of weapons and explosives near the border. Pakistani police spokeswoman Nabeela Ghazanfar said the latest death toll was 57.
The explosion, which wounded more than 120, was the deadliest to hit Pakistan in more than a year, but an official claimed there was no security lapse — despite admitting having received warning of an attack.
Indian and Pakistani intelligence agencies both picked up plans for an imminent strike on their Wagah land border and heightened security possibly averted a more devastating attack.
Pakistani and Indian agents gave conflicting accounts of whether the bomber’s true intention was to cause casualties on the Indian side of the border and stir up tensions between the nuclear-armed nations.
“It appears the bomber wanted to target ground zero where Pakistan and India border officials stand together to perform the flag ceremony but he could not enter due to tight security on the last gate,” a Pakistani intelligence official told Reuters. “Had he managed to reach the place, there would have been the worst scenario at both sides.”
Another source said a second suicide vest had been found in a field near the explosion site, suggesting there might have been another bomber. A security source said that two alerts had been issued to Punjab provincial officials, including one about a possible attack at Wagah.
An Indian official said the home ministry received two intelligence warnings in mid-October of possible attacks along the border or at the Golden Temple in the nearby city of Amritsar, the most sacred site for Sikhs. Jagdeep Singh, a superintendent of police in Amritsar who is involved with security around the Wagah border, told Reuters he had installed checkpoints at two spots 3km away from the flag ceremony venue after the warnings in October.
Despite the bloodshed, the ceremony went ahead on Monday, complete with Pakistani spectators in the stands. The Punjab army corps commander Lieutenant General Naveed Zaman said the turnout “proved that terrorists can’t break the morale and zeal of the nation”. Indian forces also took part on their side of the frontier but Indian spectators were barred.
More explosives were found during a search of the surrounding area, suggesting Islamist militants had hoped to cause far greater damage.
Among those killed were three members of the paramilitary Rangers, who are in charge of securing the area and had received intelligence tipoffs in recent days about a possible attack.
Officials said the security cordon and body searches set up to screen people entering the parade ground forced the bomber to detonate the device near the car park as people began leaving at the end of the ceremony.
Like many Pakistanis who attend the event, eyewitness Nawaz Khan had gone on Sunday with family members, visiting from the northwestern city of Peshawar. “There were 14 of us. After the parade I came out of the gate and my brother told me to go back and bring the children,” Khan said.
As he returned with the children, he said, he saw a “young boy” running towards the gate, who was stopped by a Ranger. “Then there was a huge bang and I saw my brother flying in the air. There were screams all around and the place was filled with the smell of burnt human flesh and blood,” he said.
“I had lost the children and I was screaming for them and then I saw the body of my brother lying on the ground with other bodies,” said Khan, whose children were found unhurt.
Although Pakistan has frequently been hit by devastating terrorist attacks on markets and places of worship that have killed large numbers of civilians, violence had fallen sharply in 2014 in the wake of infighting within the Pakistani Taliban following the killing of its former leader Hakimullah Mehsud and the launch in June of a major army operation against militant safe havens in North Waziristan.
Sunday’s attack was also unusual for being inside Punjab – the rich, populous province that dominates Pakistan politically – rather than the north-western tribal belt. Wagah is just 15 miles from Lahore, the home town of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif which has not experienced an attack on such a scale for several years.
Three separate groups claimed responsibility for the attack, including Jamaat ul-Ahrar, one of the most formidable new groups to split away from the Pakistani Taliban this year.
In an emailed statement, the group’s spokesman promised further attacks. He said the Wagah bombing was to avenge the “killing of those innocent people who have been killed by Pakistan army, particularly of those who have been killed in North Waziristan”.
The flag-lowering ceremony was last cancelled when Pakistan fought its third war with India in 1971. The boisterous display of nationalism continued even during the limited war fought in Kargil in 1999 over the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir.
A senior officer with India’s Border Security Force, Ashok Kumar, said security would be strengthened as a result of the attack, but said he expected hundreds of Sikhs to go ahead with a planned pilgrimage to Lahore this week.
Security forces across Pakistan were on high alert for possible attacks as Shias mark Ashura. Around 10,000 police and paramilitary Rangers have been deployed in Islamabad and Rawalpindi, officials said.
The Guardian/Agencies
