A suicide attack against a mosque on Monday left at least 44 dead, including several policemen, and 157 injured in the city of Peshawar, in northwestern Pakistan, an event that led the authorities to declare “a state of war” against The terrorism.
“The deaths have risen to 44, and there are more than 157 injured,” a city police officer, Muhammad Ijaz Khan, told the media at the entrance to the attacked mosque.
Hundreds of faithful at prayer time
The source specified that the rescue teams continue to locate injured people from under the rubble caused by the strong explosion, which took place when the mosque was especially crowded during one of the prayers.
“There were more than 300 worshipers in the mosque, and (the suicide bombing) took place during prayers,” Khan explained.
A spokesman for the city’s Lady Reading hospital, Asim Khan, told EFE that around twenty injured are in serious condition, and noted that the medical center has been forced to call for blood donations to treat the dozens of victims of the attack.
The Pakistani Defense Minister, Khawaja Asif, assured that the suicide bomber was in the front row during the prayers, and claimed that the State must act against the terrorists.
“It is time for us to fight the war on terror again,” Asif said in an interview with Pakistani Geo TV.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif condemned the “brutal killing of Muslims when they prayed to Allah.”
For the moment, no insurgent formation has claimed responsibility for the attack.
increase in attacks
The last attack against a religious center in Pakistan took place in the same city of Peshawar in March 2022, when a suicide bomber detonated his explosives in a Shiite minority mosque, leaving 56 dead and almost 200 injured.
Terrorist attacks and insurgent attacks have increased in recent months in Pakistan after several years of relative calm, largely due to the resurgence of the main Pakistani Taliban group, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).
The formation, an umbrella of tribal armed groups created in 2007 and an ally of the Afghan Taliban, has increased its attacks after ending a ceasefire with the government last November. The TTP further claimed to have joined forces with separatist groups in the southern province of Balochistan.
Since its formation, the group has carried out a brutal campaign of terror attacks across the country and killed thousands of people, including a 2012 assassination attempt on future Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai.
The Islamic State (IS) jihadist group has also carried out attacks in the past in Pakistan, one of the worst in 2018 against a rally in Balochistan, which left 128 dead and 122 injured. A second attack that same day in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province caused 4 deaths and 19 injuries.
Attacks began to decline in 2014 following a crackdown by Pakistani authorities, but signs of a resurgence are becoming clearer as relations between Pakistan and an Afghanistan under the interim rule of the Taliban, which seized power in Iraq, worsen. August 2021.
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