At least 30 people were killed and more than 130 injured in a suicide bomb blast at a Shia mosque in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, on Friday, police said.
Speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, a senior police official said he was not authorized to comment publicly on the incident. “The explosion occurred after Friday prayers, at a time when mosques across the country were packed with worshippers,” he said, adding that the death toll was feared to rise.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif confirmed the casualties in the blast at a Shia community mosque in Islamabad on Friday and condemned the attack.
Another security source told AFP, “When the attacker was stopped at the gate, he detonated the explosive himself.”
AFP journalists at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences hospital reported seeing many adults and children being brought in on stretchers or carried in arms or by their hands and legs.
Doctors and eyewitnesses at the hospital were seen helping unload victims with blood-soaked clothes from the backs of ambulances and vehicles.
Friends and relatives of the injured were seen shouting and pleading to be allowed to meet their loved ones as security was tightened in the hospital wards.
Another AFP team reported that armed security forces had cordoned off the area outside the mosque, where pools of blood could be seen on the ground.
Videos shared on social media showed several bodies lying near the mosque’s front gate and debris scattered across the prayer hall, which was covered with a red carpet.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said those involved in the blast would be identified and brought to justice.
No group has immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, which comes as Pakistani security forces face intensified insurgency in both the southern and northern provinces bordering Afghanistan.
Pakistan is a Sunni-majority country, but Shia Muslims make up around 10 to 15 percent of the population and have been repeatedly targeted in attacks in the past.
Rising insurgency
Islamabad says separatist armed groups in southern Balochistan and the Pakistani Taliban and other Islamist militants in the northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province near Islamabad are using Afghan territory as safe havens to launch attacks.
The Taliban government in Afghanistan has repeatedly denied Pakistan’s accusations, as bilateral relations have deteriorated and clashes between the two countries’ forces regularly occur along the border.
In November, a suicide bombing outside a court in Islamabad killed 12 people and wounded dozens, marking the capital’s deadliest attack in nearly three years.
The Pakistani military is also under pressure in southern Balochistan, where separatist rebels claimed responsibility for an attack last week that killed 36 civilians and 22 security personnel.
Those attacks triggered a wave of retaliatory operations, with authorities saying security forces killed around 200 militants.
(RSS/AFP)
