"It was a suicide attack. The target was the army barracks. We have collected evidence and body parts of the attacker which proves that it was a suicide attack," police official Irfan Masaood Kishvi said. Sardar Khurshid, another senior police officer in the area, said: "I can confirm that four soldiers were martyred and 11 wounded in the blast."
Wednesday's attack was the fourth suicide bombing in Jammu and Kashmir since June. On December 27, a bomber killed seven people outside a mosque in Muzaffarabad and analysts warn that the Taliban are extending their reach. The elected leader of Pakistani Kashmir, Raja Farooq Haider, condemned the attack in Tarar Khal and blamed Taliban-linked extremists.
"The terrorists have attacked the Pakistan army and the entire Kashmiri nation condemns this attack," he told AFP, confirming the death toll of four dead and 11 wounded. "A foreign hand is involved in all these incidents. These people are not coming across the line of control but from our western borders," he said. "If they are coming from let's say, these tribal areas, then perhaps the underlying assumption may be that they want to expand their activities to build a greater pressure," said security analyst Hasan Askari.