PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) – A suicide bomber blew himself up inside a crowded mosque in a closely fortified safety compound in Pakistan on Monday, killing 59 individuals within the newest assault by Islamist militants focusing on police.
Police stated the attacker appeared to have handed by a number of checkpoints manned by safety forces to succeed in the “Purple Zone” compound housing police and counter-terrorism workplaces within the restive northwestern metropolis of Peshawar.
“It was a suicide bombing,” Peshawar police chief Aijaz Khan informed Reuters. He added that most of the 170 injured had been in crucial situation.
The hospital official, Mohamed Assem, stated in a press release that the dying toll rose to 59 after a number of individuals succumbed to their wounds.
The bombing occurred a day earlier than an Worldwide Financial Fund mission was despatched to Islamabad to start talks on opening financing for the economic system of the South Asian nation, which is affected by a steadiness of funds disaster.
Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif condemned the assault.
Officers stated the attacker detonated his explosives whereas a whole lot of individuals lined up for prayers.
“We discovered traces of explosives,” Khan informed reporters, including that there was clearly a safety breach because the bomber infiltrated by essentially the most safe space of the compound.
An investigation was underneath option to learn the way the attacker breached such an elite cordon of safety and if there was any insider assist.
Khan stated the mosque corridor was crowded with as much as 400 worshipers and that a lot of the lifeless had been cops.
[1/17] Rescue staff seek for survivors underneath a collapsed roof, after a suicide bombing at a mosque in Peshawar, Pakistan, January 30, 2023. REUTERS/Faiz Aziz
No group has claimed duty for the assault, the worst in Peshawar since March 2022, when an Islamic State suicide bombing killed no less than 58 individuals in a Shiite mosque throughout Friday prayers.
Militant Islamist teams together with the Islamic State group and the Pakistani Taliban often goal Peshawar, which lies on the fringes of Pakistan’s tribal areas bordering Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.
“Allah is the best”
Protection Minister Khawaja Asif informed Geo TV that the bomber was standing within the first row of worshipers.
Mushtaq Khan, the policeman who was shot within the head, informed reporters from his hospital mattress: “Because the prayer corridor stated ‘Allahu Akbar’, there was an enormous bang.”
“We could not determine what occurred as a result of the explosion was deafening. It threw me off the balcony. The partitions and ceiling fell on me. Thank God he saved me.”
The explosion led to the autumn of the higher flooring of the mosque, trapping dozens of worshipers underneath the rubble. Reside tv footage confirmed rescuers chopping throughout the collapsed deck to make their approach by and have a tendency to victims trapped within the wreckage.
“We can’t say what number of are nonetheless underneath it,” stated the provincial governor, Haji Ghulam Ali.
“The sheer scale of the human tragedy is unimaginable,” Sharif stated. “That is nothing lower than an assault on Pakistan. The nation is overwhelmed with a deep sense of grief. I’ve little question that terrorism is our primary nationwide safety problem.”
Witnesses described chaos as police and rescue staff rushed the injured to hospitals.
Sharif, who appealed to his occasion’s staff to donate blood in hospitals, stated that anybody who targets Muslims throughout prayer has nothing to do with Islam.
(Reporting by Gibran Ahmed in Peshawar and Asif Shahzad in Islamabad). Written by Shilpa Jamkhandikar and Asif Shahzad; Enhancing by Bernadette Baum, Mark Heinrichs, and Grant McCall
Our requirements: Thomson Reuters Belief Ideas.