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A bombing at a Shia mosque in Islamabad has killed more than 30 people and injured at least 160, police in Pakistan’s capital said.
The attack during Friday prayers was the deadliest blast in Islamabad in over a decade, and came just three months after a suicide blast at a judicial complex in the city killed at least 12 people.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif condemned Friday’s bombing in a statement, saying he had directed interior minister Mohsin Naqvi to “conduct a complete investigation into the incident and immediately identify those responsible”.
Police said they expected the death toll from the attack, which was carried out while hundreds of members of Pakistan’s Shia minority were gathered at the mosque, to rise. Dozens of people were rushed to nearby hospitals with life-threatening injuries.
Allama Raja Nasir, the opposition leader in Pakistan’s Senate and a cleric representing a Shia political party, blamed the government for failing to prevent the attack.
“Such a terrorist act in the federal capital is not only proof of a serious failure in protecting human lives, but also a big question mark on the performance of the administration and law enforcement agencies,” he wrote on social media site X.
Until the November suicide bombing, Islamabad and other urban centres had been largely spared from a surge in violence that has been plaguing Pakistan’s frontier regions. Pakistani Taliban and Baloch separatist militants killed more than 1,800 security personnel and civilians last year, according to the New Delhi-based South Asia Terrorism Portal.
Last week, militants from the Baloch Liberation Army launched an audacious co-ordinated assault throughout the province of Balochistan, which is roughly the size of Germany, killing four dozen people, according to officials. Pakistan’s military claims to have killed more than 200 suspected Baloch separatists in response.
Friday’s blast occurred as Uzbekistan’s President Shavkat Mirziyoyev was attending an event with Sharif as part of a two-day official visit to Pakistan.
In the past, fighters from the Islamic State-Khorasan Province and Pakistani Taliban groups, which Pakistan says are both based in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, have targeted the Shia minority.
