At least 56 people were killed and 194 injured in a Suicide bombing during Friday prayers against a Shiite mosque in Peshawarin northwestern Pakistan, according to medical sources.
The blast came a few minutes before prayers were to begin at a Shiite mosque on a narrow street in the Kosha Risaldar neighborhood, near the historic Qissa Khwani Bazaar.
“In total, 56 people died and 194 were injured. The injured include 50 critically ill patients,” Muhammad Asim Khan, a spokesman for Lady Reading Hospital in Peshawar, told AFP. A previous balance spoke of at least 30 deaths.
The number of victims could increasesaid to the AFP Peshawar Police Chief Muhammad Ijaz Khan.
“Two assailants shot at the policemen at the main gate of the mosque. One police officer died on the spot and the other was seriously injured, ”he detailed.
“I was just outside the mosque when I saw that a man shot two police officers before entering the mosque. A few seconds later, I heard a big ‘bang,'” she explained to the AFP a witness, Zahid Khan.
Another witness, Ali Asghar, said he saw a man “open fire with a gun” inside the mosque, and “kill people one by one and then blow himself up.”
A reporter from the AFP saw dismembered bodies at the scene, as rescue services and local people struggled to help the victims by carrying them on their shoulders.
Prime Minister Imran Khan “strongly condemned” the attack, according to one of his spokesmen.
The return of the TTP
Peshawar, some 50 km from the border with Afghanistan, was scene of daily attacks during the first half of the 2010sbut in recent years security had improved a lot.
The last such attack took place in November 2018, when at least 31 people were killed in a suicide bombing at a market in the city.
Pakistan has long faced the return of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the Pakistani Taliban, galvanized by the coming to power in August of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Although they have common roots, the TTP differs from the Afghan Taliban. He claimed responsibility for several attacks since the beginning of this year.
One of the worst atrocities committed by the TTP was the massacre of around 150 people, mostly students, in Peshawar in December 2014.
Pakistan’s Shiites have also been targeted by the Islamic State (IS) group in the past. Your local branch, the Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K), has claimed responsibility for numerous attacks in the country in recent years. (I)
Source: Eluniverso
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