Summary TTP has denied any link to the suicide attack and firing in Islamabad District Court.
ISLAMABAD (Dunya News/ AFP) – An unknown militant group Ahrar-ul-Hind has claimed responsibility of the suicide blast and firing in District Court.
Talking to British media from an undisclosed location, spokesman of Ahrar-ul-Hind said they are an independent group and have no links with banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). He said that Ahrar-ul-Hind would continue its attack until imposition of Sharia in the country.
Earlier, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) spokesman Shahdullah Shahid condemned the Islamabad incident and said that TTP had no link to the suicide attack and firing.
Eleven people including Additional Session Judge Rafaqat Awan were killed and 24 others were injured Monday in a gun and suicide bomb attack on district court complex in Islamabad.
Pakistan has been in the grip of a bloody homegrown Taliban insurgency since 2007 but there have been very few attacks in recent years in the capital.
There have been reports of disagreement over talks within the TTP, and analysts have voiced fears that any splintering of the movement would render the peace process useless.
The dead included Judge Rafaqat Awan, who last year rejected a petition to prosecute former military ruler Pervez Musharraf over a deadly raid on Islamabad s radical Red Mosque in 2007.
The case against Musharraf later went ahead and it was not clear whether Awan was the intended target of Monday s attack.
Eyewitnesses described the gunmen firing indiscriminately in the warren of narrow, dusty streets housing court chambers and lawyers offices.
"At 9:00 am armed men surrounded the court compound. They entered the chamber and started firing," he told AFP, adding that he had helped recover several bodies. "The attackers were armed with Kalashnikovs and hand grenades."
On Sunday the Pakistani government announced it was halting air strikes against suspected Taliban hideouts in the restive tribal areas along the Afghan border in response to the ceasefire the militants called on Saturday.
The government began peace talks with the TTP last month but the dialogue broke down after militants killed 23 kidnapped soldiers.
The military responded with a series of air strikes in the tribal areas that killed more than 100 insurgents, according to security officials.
Maulana Sami-ul-Haq, the head of the TTP negotiating team, condemned the court attack and urged the government to stick with the talks.
The Taliban s ceasefire announcement on Saturday was met with scepticism by analysts, who said it may have been a tactic to allow them to regroup after they had suffered heavy losses in air strikes.
The government has struck peace agreements with the Pakistani Taliban several times in the past but they have failed to yield lasting results.
The umbrella militant group emerged in response to the raid on the Red Mosque in 2007, but violence in the country began to surge in 2004 following the army s deployment in the tribal areas.
