A suicide attack against a mosque left this Monday at least 27 muertos, including several policemen, and 140 wounded in the city of Peshawarin northwest Pakistan, an event that led the authorities to declare a “state of war” against terrorism.
“Deaths have risen to 27, and there are more than 140 injured”a city police officer told the media, Muhammed Ijaz Khan, at the entrance to the attacked mosque.
300 faithful at prayer time
The source specified that the rescue teams continue to locate injured people from under the rubble caused by the loud bangwhich took place when the mosque was especially crowded during one of the prayers.
“There were more than three hundred worshipers in the mosque, and (the suicide bombing) took place during prayer,” Khan explained.
A spokesman for the city’s Lady Reading Hospital, Asim Khan, He told EFE that around twenty wounded are in serious condition, and pointed out that the medical center has been forced to make an appeal to donate blood to treat the dozens of victims of the attack.
Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Asifassured 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.
The Prime Minister of Pakistan, Shehbaz SharifFor his part, he condemned the “brutal murder of Muslims when they prayed to Allah.”
For now, no insurgent formation has claimed responsibility of the attack.
Increase in attacks
The latest attack on a religious center in Pakistan took place in the same city of Peshawar in March 2022when a suicide bomber detonated his explosives at a Shiite minority mosque, killing 56 and injuring nearly 200.
Terrorist attacks and insurgent attacks have increased in recent months in Pakistan after several years of relative calm, andn large part due to the resurgence of the main Pakistani Taliban group, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).
The formation, an umbrella group 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 also 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 the future Nobel laureate. Malala Yousafzai.
The jihadist group Islamic State (IS) 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 wounded. A second attack that same day in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province caused 4 deaths and 19 injuries.
The attacks began to decrease in 2014 after an offensive by the Pakistani authorities, but the signs of its revival are becoming clearer as relations worsen between Pakistan and an Afghanistan under the interim government of the Taliban, which seized power in August 2021.