Suicide bomber kills 20, injures 96 at mosque in northwestern Pakistan

At least 20 peo­ple have been killed and 96 wor­shipers injured in a sui­cide bomb­ing inside a mosque in the north­west­ern Pak­istani city of Peshawar, offi­cials said.

Peshawar police chief Sadiq Khan did not imme­di­ate­ly claim respon­si­bil­i­ty for the attacks, but the Pak­istani Tal­iban have been accused of sim­i­lar sui­cide bomb­ings in the past.

The per­pe­tra­tor det­o­nat­ed the sui­cide loin­cloth as about 150 wor­shipers, includ­ing many police offi­cers from the near­by police sta­tion, were pray­ing inside. Local police offi­cer Zafar Khan said the blast caused the roof of the mosque to col­lapse, injur­ing dozens of people.

One of the sur­vivors, Meena Guru, 38, a police offi­cer, said she was inside a mosque when the bomb explod­ed. She says she does­n’t know how she sur­vived unharmed. She said she heard scream­ing and cry­ing after the explosion.

Res­cue teams were scram­bling to remove piles of rub­ble from the mosque grounds and reach wor­shipers still buried under the rub­ble, police said. Khan said sev­er­al of the injured were in crit­i­cal con­di­tion in hos­pi­tals, rais­ing the death toll.

In a state­ment, Prime Min­is­ter Shah­baz Sharif con­demned the attack and ordered author­i­ties to pro­vide the best med­ical care to the vic­tims. He also promised “severe action” against the per­pe­tra­tors of the attack.

For­mer Prime Min­is­ter Imran Khan also con­demned the attack, call­ing it a “sui­cide bomb­ing” on Twit­ter. “I extend my prayers and con­do­lences to the fam­i­lies of the vic­tims,” the for­mer prime min­is­ter said. “It is imper­a­tive to improve intel­li­gence ser­vices and prop­er­ly equip the police to com­bat the grow­ing threat of terrorism.”

Peshawar is the cap­i­tal of Khy­ber Pakhtunkhwa province, which bor­ders Afghanistan, and is the site of fre­quent attacks by extremists.

Pak­istan’s Tal­iban, an inde­pen­dent group known as Teherik-e-Tal­iban Pak­istan or TTP, will seize pow­er in neigh­bor­ing Afghanistan in August 2021, in the final stages of with­draw­ing US and NATO forces from a 20-year war. He is also said to be an aide to the Tal­iban in seized Afghanistan.

For the past 15 years, the TTP has rebelled in Pak­istan, fight­ing for stricter enforce­ment of Islam­ic law in the coun­try, the release of mem­bers held in gov­ern­ment cus­tody, and a reduc­tion in the mil­i­tary pres­ence in Pak­istan’s for­mer trib­al areas.