Peshawar’s civil secretariat vacated over security concerns

PESHAWAR: The Civil Secretariat in Peshawar was evacuated on Friday and all employees were told to leave their offices due to security concerns following a threat alert for the mosque inside the secretariat, according to sources. “We were told to leave immediately, ” sources told Dawn. A senior secretariat official said security had been beefed up for almost three days, soon after the Kohat explosion. The official added that a threat alert had been issued for the mosque located inside the secretariat. On Sep 18, in a deadly two-pronged assault, at least 23 people, including 15 police officials, were martyred and over 100 were wounded when an explosives-laden vehicle detonated near a mosque in Kohat district’s old Police Lines, followed by terrorists storming the compound and attacking police facilities. Most of the attackers who managed to enter the compound following the explosion were killed within the first two hours of the attack. One assailant, however, managed to reach and hide inside a building within the compound. The following day, police said that an overnight clearance operation had been completed, with a total of eight terrorists being killed. A few days later, on Thursday, a Counter-Terrorism Department official was martyred and three others were wounded during an intelligence-based operation carried out against three suicide bombers in Garhi Sherdad area of Warsak road on the outskirts of the provincial capital.

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