Peshawar, Jan 30: The death toll in the suicide bombing in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar rose to 83 while at least 157 people were injured, several of them critically, a hospital spokesperson said on Tuesday.
A suicide bomber blew himself up inside a crowded mosque in a highly fortified security compound in Pakistan on Monday, the latest in a string of attacks targeting police.
Police said the attacker appeared to have passed through several barricades manned by security forces to get into the Red Zone compound that houses police and counter-terrorism offices in the northwestern city of Peshawar.
“It was a suicide bombing,” Peshawar police chief Muhammad Ijaz Khan said.
Authorities said the bomber detonated the explosives at the moment hundreds of people lined up to pray. “We have found traces of explosives,” Khan said.
A security lapse had clearly occurred as the bomber had slipped through the most secure area of the compound, he said.
An inquiry was under way into how the attacker breached such an elite security cordon and whether there was any inside help.
Khan said the mosque hall was packed with up to 400 worshippers, and that most of the dead were police officers.
Peshawar district administrator Riaz Mehsud told Arab News: “I think 90 percent of the casualties are police personnel because most of those offering prayers in the mosque were policemen.”
Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said the bomber was standing in the first row of worshippers. Ahmad Khan, a police constable who was inside the mosque when the bomb went off, said the roof collapsed after the explosion. “It was the time for Zuhr prayers,” Khan said. “I was in the second row among worshippers when the blast took place. The roof of the mosque collapsed with many worshippers trapped but I managed to come out with small injuries.”
Another injured police officer, Mushtaq Khan, said: “We couldn’t figure out what happened as the bang was deafening. It threw me out of the veranda. The walls and roof fell on me. Thanks to God, he saved me.”
Witnesses described chaotic scenes as the police and rescuers scrambled to rush the wounded to hospitals.The explosion brought down the upper storey of the mosque, trapping dozens of worshippers in the rubble. Live TV footage showed rescuers cutting through the collapsed rooftop to make their way down and tend to victims caught in the wreckage. “We can’t say how many are still under it,” said provincial governor Haji Ghulam Ali.
Taliban commander claims attack
Sarbakaf Mohmand, a commander for the Pakistani Taliban, also known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP, claimed responsibility for the attack in a post on Twitter.
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