ISLAMABAD: The Pakistani Taliban on Monday denied involvement in a bombing attack on a police convoy that was escorting foreign ambassadors in the restive northwest, as authorities said they were still trying to determine who was behind it.
Most of the ambassadors and senior envoys were traveling with their family members on Sunday to the Swat Valley, a former stronghold of the Pakistani Taliban, when the attack occurred in Malam Jabba, one of Pakistan’s two ski resorts in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan.
No one claimed responsibility for the attack, but Mohammad Khurasani, a spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, denied detonating the improvised explosive device that hit a police vehicle accompanying the convoy.
A police officer was killed and four others were wounded in the attack, which drew strong condemnation from Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and other officials.
The envoys were all unharmed, but the attack suggested there was a security breach.
“For sure it was a security breach because the convoy’s route was only known to police, and the bomb disposal unit had reportedly cleared the route,” said Abdullah Khan, a defense analyst and managing director of the Islamabad-based Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies.
“Some insider (appears to have) leaked the information about the travel plans of the foreign ambassadors to the militants,” he added.
Khan said the attack signaled a shift in the approach of insurgents, who previously targeted security forces.
Pakistani defense analyst Syed Muhammad Ali said there was a need for better coordination between federal authorities and police about such high-profile visits to the northwest, which has witnessed a surge in violence.
Those traveling in the convoy were ambassadors and officials from Indonesia, Portugal, Kazakhstan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Turkmenistan, Vietnam, Iran, Russia and Tajikistan. All of them later returned to the capital, Islamabad, according to Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
In a statement, TTP said it had nothing to do with the attack. TTP is a separate group but also a close ally of the Afghan Taliban, who seized power in neighboring Afghanistan in August 2021 as US and NATO troops were in the final stages of their pullout from the country after 20 years of war.
Many TTP leaders and fighters have found sanctuary and have even been living openly in Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover, which also emboldened the Pakistani Taliban. The situation has strained relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan’s Taliban government, which says it does not allow anyone to use its soil for attacks against any country.
Authorities were investigating to determine whether there was a security breach, since details about the convoy’s travel plans had been circulated only to officials. Authorities said they were also collecting information to determine who planted the IED device along the route.
Mohammad Ali Khan, a senior police officer, said that so far no arrest had been made.
Sunday’s attack came months after a suicide bomber in northwestern Pakistan rammed his explosive-laden car into a vehicle, killing five Chinese nationals and their Pakistani driver in Shangla, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
The Chinese victims were construction workers and engineers who were working on Dasu Dam, the biggest hydropower project in Pakistan. Since then, Pakistan has beefed up security for foreigners and envoys traveling in the region.

COLOMBO: Sri Lanka’s first leftist president was sworn in to office Monday vowing to restore public faith in politics but said he had no magic solution to the hardships suffered following an unprecedented economic crisis.
Self-avowed Marxist Anura Kumara Dissanayaka of the People’s Liberation Front (JVP) took his oath at the colonial-era Presidential Secretariat in Colombo after trouncing his nearest rivals in Saturday’s vote.
The previously fringe politician, whose party led two failed uprisings in the island nation that left tens of thousands dead, saw a surge of support after the 2022 economic meltdown immiserated millions of ordinary Sri Lankans.
Dissanayaka, the bearded 55-year-old son of a laborer, was sworn in by chief justice Jayantha Jayasuriya in a nationally televised ceremony attended by diplomats, lawmakers, Buddhist and other clergy and the military.
“I am not a conjuror, I am not a magician, I am a common citizen,” he said after taking his oath.
“I have strengths and limitations, things I know and things I don’t... my responsibility is to be part of a collective effort to end this crisis.”
A small crowd of JVP supporters gathered outside the secretariat to celebrate, waving pictures of Dissanayaka and the national flag.
Dissanayaka succeeds outgoing president Ranil Wickremesinghe, who took office at the peak of the financial crisis following the government’s first foreign debt default and months of punishing food, fuel and medicine shortages.
Wickremesinghe, 75, imposed steep tax hikes and other austerity measures under the terms of an International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout.
His policies ended the shortages and returned the economy to growth but left millions struggling to make ends meet.
Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena resigned shortly before the ceremony, clearing the way for Dissanayaka to appoint his own cabinet.
Dissanayaka’s party has said he wants to have an interim administration until a fresh parliament is elected. The JVP has only three lawmakers in the 225-member legislature.
He has softened some policies since his rise to popularity, saying he believes in an open economy and is not totally opposed to privatization.
He has vowed to press ahead with the IMF rescue package negotiated by his predecessor last year but modify its terms in order to deliver tax cuts.


Addressing concerns about the JVP’s historical anti-West and anti-India stance, Dissanayaka said he wanted international support to rebuild the economy.
“We are not a nation that should be isolated,” he said, as Colombo-based diplomats watched from the balcony of the presidential office.
“Regardless of the power divisions in the world, we intend to work with other nations to benefit our country.”
India and China — Sri Lanka’s biggest neighbor and largest bilateral creditor respectively — are competing for influence in the island nation, strategically situated on global east-west sea routes.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he looked forward to working closely with Dissanayaka to “strengthen our multifaceted cooperation for the benefit of our people and the entire region.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping said he hoped to work with the new president “to continue our traditional friendship (and) enhance mutual political trust.”


Dissanayaka’s party led two rebellions in the 1970s and 1980s that left more than 80,000 people dead before renouncing violence.
It had been a peripheral player in Sri Lankan politics in the decades since, winning less than four percent of the vote during the most recent parliamentary elections in 2020.
But Sri Lanka’s crisis proved an opportunity for Dissanayaka, who saw his popularity rise after pledging to change the island’s “corrupt” political culture.
Dissanayaka was a JVP student leader during the second insurrection and has described how one of his teachers sheltered him to save him from government-backed death squads that killed party activists.
He counts famous Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara among his heroes.
Dissanayaka becomes the country’s first president to get less than 50 percent of the popular vote. He was elected with just over 42 percent, the lowest since presidential elections began in 1988.
“I am fully aware of the composition and size of the mandate I received,” he said. “It is my responsibility to earn the support and confidence of those who did not vote for me or place their trust in me.”