‘RAW, Mossad behind Quetta blasts through Afghan network’

ISLAMABAD - India’s spy agency Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and Israel’s Mossad, through their “strong network in Afghanisatan”, were behind the suicide attack on a Shia procession in Quetta that killed 73, an editorial in a Pakistani paper said Sunday.

“The suicide attack on the Yaum-al-Quds (Jerusalem Day) in Quetta appears to be a carefully considered conspiracy and it must be borne in mind that both the Indian agency RAW and Israeli agency Mossad have set up a strong network in Afghanistan. It is through this network only that the Quetta rally was targeted,” the editorial in the Nawa-i-Waqt said.

“It was thus that after the devastation of the floods, a new chapter of a tragedy began in Baluchistan,” it added.

At least 73 people were killed and more than 150 injured in a blast that ripped through a Shia procession near Meezan chowk in Quetta Friday. The banned Sunni radical group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi had claimed responsibility for the attack.

The editorial cited informed sources as saying that preliminary investigations into the explosions outside Karbala Gamay Shah in Lahore Wednesday in which 35 people were killed, also indicated a conspiracy by “external agencies” and clues had been found that suggested “forces inimical to Pakistan” had joined hands to start a new campaign of destabilisation.

It said all political parties and leaders of Pakistan must take serious note of these incidents, which are a series of a “new wave of tension and terrorism” and acknowledge that their “wrong political policies” were responsible for the difficult phase the country is passing through.

Noting that former president Pervez Musharraf had cited the growing network of Indian agents in Balochistan striving to misguide the population and turn them against Pakistan, it said the present dispensation is not ready to admit to the possibility of a “foreign hand” in even the biggest terrorist outrages happening in the province.

“A move to restore rights to the people of Balochistan and to bring them in the mainstream was begun but fell hostage to the political tug-of-war between various parties and ultimately petered out. Meanwhile Indian and Israeli agents are working day and night in Balochistan to foment trouble, under the clear supervision of America, which is also helping them in this endeavour,” it said, calling on all politicians to get their act together and seriously take up the challenges facing the nation.