Yesterday’s suicide blast which ripped through a corner meeting of Awami National Party’s (ANP) Provincial Candidate Haroon Bilour from PK-78 Peshawar-XIII refreshed the wounds of the party which it suffered in 2013.
Haroon Bilour was among 21 people who embraced martyrdom as a result of a blast in Yakatoot area of Peshawar on Tuesday night.
It is worth mentioning here Haroon Bilour’s father Bashir Ahmed Bilour was also martyred when a suicide bomber affiliated with Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) blew himself up in an ANP meeting in Peshawar in December 2012.
Whereas Haroon Bilour himself had survived an attack in April 2013 when terrorists targeted an ANP election rally; however, the party’s senior leader Ghulam Ahmed Bilour had received injuries along with other people.
إِنَّا لِلّهِ وَإِنَّـا إِلَيْهِ رَاجِعونَ – ہارون بلور کو پشاور میں شہید کر دیا گیا ہے … pic.twitter.com/CP5ZWc0uvD
— PTV News (@PTVNewsOfficial) July 10, 2018
The fresh blast targeting ANP’s leader Haroon Bilour in Peshawar refreshed the memories of 2013 when ANP – a secular and leftist Pashtun nationalist political party – suffered back to back losses as a result of series of bombings.
Last picture of shaheed #HaroonBilour #RIP shaheed e jamhooriat pic.twitter.com/Wnpv0kI1l0
— Asma Shirazi (@asmashirazi) July 10, 2018
The ANP led by the Ameer Haider Khan Hoti as the Chief Minister government the Country’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province from 2008 to 2013. Throughout its five-year tenure, the province remained bathed in blood because of consecutive terror attacks by the TTP.
Even as the Country’s 2013 general elections were about to occur, ANP couldn’t organize its political electioneering campaign properly, and lost hundreds of its leaders and supporters around the polls in terror attacks.
