ISLAMABAD - A team of Danish diplomats and technical staff has arrived in Islamabad to liaise with Pakistani police after a suicide bombing outside Denmark's embassy, the foreign ministry said Thursday.
The Danes, who flew in on Wednesday, will also carry out a damage assessment following Monday's devastating car bomb which killed six people including a Danish citizen.
Al Qaeda claimed in Internet statements Wednesday to have carried out the attack in revenge for the publication in Danish newspapers of cartoons insulting the Prophet Mohammed, SITE monitoring services said.
‘A Danish delegation comprising diplomats and some technical support staff arrived in Islamabad on Wednesday,’ foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Sadiq told a press briefing.
‘They are assessing damage to the Danish embassy building and meeting Islamabad police officials,’ he said, adding however that ‘there are no investigation experts in this team.’
Sadiq would not comment on the Al Qaeda claim.
Officials in Copenhagen however said that Denmark's secret services have sent three experts to Islamabad as part of their investigation.
Danish intelligence officials said Wednesday that the suicide attack on the embassy in Islamabad had been meticulously planned for a ‘long time with precision’.
Footage from the embassy's video surveillance cameras has been handed over to Pakistani authorities as part of their criminal enquiry, said the PET intelligence service in a statement.
The video showed ‘a car with a man at the wheel arriving at high speed, passing in front of the embassy's entrance before the explosion several seconds later,’ PET added.
A Danish national of Pakistani origin and two Pakistani staff members at the embassy were among those killed in the blast.
The embassy, located outside Islamabad's secure diplomatic enclave, shut briefly in February 2006 due to riots over the cartoons in Pakistan which left five people dead.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment