Pakistan arrests suspects linked to bombing in Islamabad

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Authorities arrested five people suspected of involvement in last week’s suicide car bombing that killed a police officer in the capital of Islamabad, Pakistan’s interior minister said Tuesday.

Rana Sanaullah Khan made the announcement on Twitter, saying the detainees included the suicide bomber’s handler. He said the attacker arrived in the garrison city of Rawalpindi from a former tribal area of Kurram.

Khan did not disclose the identity of the detainees and no spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, which had claimed responsibility for the attack, was immediately available for comment.

Initially, police and the government said the slain driver of the weaponized vehicle was also a suspect. But later, a probe into the attack concluded he was innocent as he did not know that militants were traveling in his car.

Several civilians and three police were also wounded in Friday’s bombing.

Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan leaders and fighters have been hiding in neighboring Afghanistan. The Pakistani Taliban are separate but allied with the Afghan Taliban, who seized power in neighboring Afghanistan last year as U.S. and NATO troops withdrew after 20 years of war.