Islamabad: A Daesh flag was spotted flying atop a bridge by a passer-by in Pakistan’s capital city on the main highway on Sunday morning.
“Khilafat (The Caliphate) is coming,” read a slogan on the black flag.
Islamabad Police removed the flag on the Islamabad Expressway.
The police was informed by resident Naveed Ahmad Khan. Khan said he saw the terrorist group’s flag hoisted on a bridge near Iqbal Town on Sunday morning.
“After receiving information about the flag, we removed it immediately, but despite our best efforts, we could not confirm who put up the flag. It could be mischief or a prank,” the Khanna Police Station House Officer Abdul Sattar told media.
Minister for Interior Ahsan Iqbal has taken notice of the Daesh flag in the capital city and has asked the inspector general of police to file a report.
Despite the presence of extensive CCTV camera network, miscreants were able to put up the Daesh flag on a major highway in Islamabad, regarded as one of the safest cities in the country.
Islamabad has over 1,900 surveillance cameras installed across the city as part of its ‘Safe City Project’ to monitor significant buildings, entry and exit points, roads, commercial centres and some residential areas.
However, it was unlikely that the cameras would have caught the culprits in the act because “our cameras are installed at such an angle that they only focus on the traffic. It’s unlikely that the people who put up the flag would be visible in the footage”, an official told local newspaper, Express Tribune.
The last time such flags were spotted near Islamabad were in November 2014 near the highly-secured Pakistan Ordnance Factories at Wah.
Pakistan has repeatedly denied the presence of Daesh in the country while acknowledging the rise of the terror group in Afghanistan.
The Daesh terror group has reportedly taken roots in the mountainous regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan since early 2015 branding as the Islamic State of Khorasan (IS-K), a label that differentiates the militant group from its main branch in Iraq and Syria.
Over the past couple of years, there have been media reports of Daesh pamphlets being found in different parts of the country.
In April 2017, Pakistani counter-terror authorities arrested a female university student, Noreen Laghari, who was allegedly planning to target Christian gatherings on Easter eve in Lahore, on Daesh behalf.
In 2015, Counter Terrorism Force arrested two allegedly distributing the leaflets of Daesh, written in Persian and Pashtu languages, in Peshawar.
In 2014, leaflets calling for support of Daesh were reported in parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, while pro-Daesh slogans appeared on walls too.
However, Pakistanis developed strong negative sentiments against the terror group after the massive bombing at a Sufi shrine in Sindh province in February 2017 which killed 80 people and injured more than 250 — country’s deadliest attack in years.
