28 killed, 150 hurt in blast at mosque in Pakistan's Peshawar

PESHAWAR: At least 28 people were killed and 150 others injured when a suicide attacker blew himself up at a mosque here in the capital of Pakistan's restive province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on Monday, officials said.

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The blast occurred near the Police Lines area around 1.40 pm when the Zuhr prayers were being offered, the Dawn newspaper reported.

According to security officials, the suicide attacker was present in the front row during the prayers when he exploded himself, injuring dozens of people offering prayers. "A portion of the building had collapsed and several people are believed to be under it," police official Sikandar Khan said.

The injured are being shifted to the Lady Reading Hospital in Peshawar, the officials said.

Hospital sources said 23 of those injured were in a critical condition. The toll is likely to go up.

An emergency has been imposed in the locality and the area has been cordoned off.

Suspicion in such attacks falls most often on the Pakistani Taliban, who have in the past claimed similar bombings.

The Pakistani Taliban, are known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP, and are separate group but also a close ally of the Afghan Taliban, who seized power in neighboring Afghanistan in August 2021 as US and Nato troops were in the final stages of their pullout from the country after 20 years of war.

The TTP has waged an insurgency in Pakistan over the past 15 years, fighting for stricter enforcement of Islamic laws in the country, the release of their members who are in government custody and a reduction of Pakistani military presence in the country’s former tribal regions.