Over 50 killed in attack at Pakistan mosque

PESHWAR: At least 56 people were killed and 194 wounded in a suicide attack at a mosque on Friday in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar, where rescuers frantically ferried the dead and wounded from the scene.

“Those who are injured include 50 critically,” said Muhammad Asim Khan, a spokesman for Peshawar’s Lady Reading Hospital.

One witness saw the attacker enter the mosque before Friday prayers and open “fire with a pistol”, picking out the worshippers “one-by-one”.

He “then blew himself up”, Ali Asghar said.

The attack comes on the first day of a cricket Test match in Rawalpindi — around 190 kilometres to the east — between Pakistan and Australia, who haven’t toured the country in nearly a quarter of a century because of security concerns.

“It was a suicide attack,” Muhammad Ali Saif, a spokesman for the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial government, said.

POLICE OFFICERS SHOT

Peshawar police chief Muhammad Ijaz Khan said two police officers were shot at the entrance of the mosque.

“One policeman died on the spot while the other was critically injured,” he said.

A spokesman for Prime Minister Imran Khan’s office said he “strongly condemned” the attack.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the apparent suicide bombing.

Peshawar — just 50 kilometres from the porous border with Afghanistan — was a frequent target of militants in the early 2010s but security has greatly improved in recent years.

Pakistan has recently been battling a resurgence of its domestic chapter of the Taliban, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).

A one-month truce last year failed to hold and there are fears the TTP has been emboldened by the success of the Afghan Taliban.

At least 31 people were killed in a suicide blast at a crowded market in Peshawar in 2018.

At least 88 people died and hundreds more were wounded a year earlier when a suicide bomber blew himself up among a crowd of devotees at a shrine in southern Sindh province. — AFP/Reuters