Peshawar (Pakistan), March 4
A suicide bombing at a Shia Muslim mosque during Friday prayers in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar killed at least 56 people and injured nearly 200, police and hospital officials said.
Two armed men who arrived near the mosque on a motorcycle opened fire when they were stopped by police, before one of them forced his way into a crowded hall and detonated his suicide vest, according to a senior police official.
The fate of the second attacker remains unclear and authorities were still determining whether he also entered the mosque before the blast, senior police official Ijaz Khan said.
The attack is one of the deadliest in years on Pakistan’s Shia minority, which has long been targeted by Sunni Muslim Islamist militants, including Islamic State and Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also known as the Pakistani Taliban.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
At least 54 people were killed and 194 people wounded, many of whom were in critical condition, officials at the nearby Lady Reading Hospital said.
According to Sardar Hussain, who lost three relatives in the blast, the mosque was the only place of worship for the Shia community in Peshawar’s old city.
Attacks by Islamist insurgents had become an almost daily occurrence in Pakistan until the military launched a crackdown on militants in 2014.
