Pakistan claims it foiled Islamic State expansion into country

PanARMENIAN.Net - Pakistan's military on Thursday, September 1 said it has crushed Islamic State's attempt to expand there, dismissing as propaganda claims by the Middle East-based Islamist militants that they had carried out a major bombing last month, Reuters reports.

The comments were, however, a rare acknowledgment by a senior Pakistani official that Islamic State, mainly based in Syria and Iraq, has had any active presence in a country that is home to myriad militant groups including the Afghan and Pakistan Taliban, al Qaeda and the Haqqani network.

Lieutenant General Asim Bajwa, the military's top spokesman, also rejected U.S. complaints that it was not acting against the Haqqani network, suspected of carrying out suicide bomb attacks in Kabul, saying Pakistan was pursuing an "indiscriminate operation" against all militants.

Pakistani authorities have so far arrested 309 people associated with Islamic State (IS) on its territory, he said. They were involved in attacks on media and security personnel, and were planning attacks on government, diplomatic and civilian targets, he added.

"They tried to make an ingress, and they failed and they have been apprehended so far," Bajwa said.

Most of those captured by Pakistan were established Pakistani jihadists who had switched loyalties to Islamic State's self-proclaimed worldwide caliphate, but about 25 were foreigners including Afghans and some Syrians, he said.

Bajwa said that of a core group of 20 organizers, "we have captured all of them, except for one who I am sure is not in Pakistan".

He said IS fighters were still present in the Afghan provinces of Nangarhar, Khost and Kunar, which lie along the border with Pakistan.

The movement's leader for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Hafiz Saeed Khan, was killed last month by a U.S. drone strike in eastern Afghanistan.

International concern that Islamic State was establishing an operational presence in Pakistan increased after the group said it carried out a suicide bombing at a hospital in the city of Quetta that killed more than 70 people.

However, a breakaway faction of the Pakistani Taliban also claimed the hospital bombing and Bajwa said he believed the Islamic State statement was false.

"We haven't got any evidence of involvement by Daesh. I think this was just an attempt to glorify themselves," he said, using the name by which IS is also known.