A suicide blast claimed by the Islamic State group (IS) at a Shiite mosque in Islamabad killed at least 31 people on Friday, February 6, with 169 more wounded in the deadliest attack in Pakistan’s capital since the 2008 Marriott hotel bombing.
City officials said 31 people died in the explosion at the Imam Bargah Qasr-e-Khadijatul Kubra mosque in the Tarlai area on the city’s outskirts, with scores more being treated for injuries. The death toll was expected to rise further.
The blast occurred at Friday prayers, when mosques around the country are packed with worshipers. IS said one of its militants had targeted the congregation, detonating an explosive vest and “inflicting a large number of deaths and injuries”, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors jihadist communications.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif vowed that those behind the blast would be found and brought to justice. The attack was the deadliest in the Pakistani capital since September 2008, when 60 people were killed in a suicide truck bomb blast that destroyed part of the five-star Marriott hotel.
Bodies, bloodied clothing, debris
AFP journalists at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences hospital saw several people, including children, being carried in on stretchers or by their arms and legs. Medics and bystanders helped unload victims with blood-soaked clothes from the back of ambulances and vehicles. At least one casualty arrived in the boot of a car.
Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar branded the attack “a heinous crime against humanity and a blatant violation of Islamic principles”. “Pakistan stands united against terrorism in all its forms,” he said in a post on X.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said “attacks against civilians and places of worship are unacceptable”, according to his spokesman.
Growing insurgencies
The attack comes as Pakistan’s security forces battle intensifying insurgencies in southern and northern provinces that border Afghanistan. Pakistan is a Sunni-majority nation, but Shiites make up between 10 and 15 percent of the population and have been targeted in attacks throughout the region in the past.
Islamabad has said separatist armed groups in southern Balochistan, and the Pakistani Taliban and other Islamist militants in northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province near Islamabad, have used Afghan territory as a safe haven from which to launch attacks.
Afghanistan’s Taliban government has repeatedly denied Pakistan’s accusations. Bilateral relations have plummeted, with forces from both sides regularly clashing along the border.
In Balochistan, attacks claimed by separatist insurgents last week killed 36 civilians and 22 security personnel, prompting a wave of counter-operations in which authorities said security forces killed almost 200 militants.
