PAKISTAN MOSQUE BOMBING KILLS 59 PEOPLE
A powerful suicide bombing Monday ripped through a mosque frequented by police officers in a highly secured part of the city of Peshawar, Pakistan, killing at least 59 people and wounding nearly 160 in the worst attack in the country in months, police and hospital officials said.
The attack broke a period of relative calm in Peshawar, the capital of the restive Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province in northwestern Pakistan. The northwest has been the site of several attacks on police and military targets in recent months, especially in areas that straddle the border with Afghanistan, and the Pakistani Taliban have claimed responsibility for them.
On Monday, the group denied playing a role in this attack.
Earlier, however, some junior commanders of the group claimed in Twitter posts that the attack had been carried out to avenge the killing of a Taliban leader in a bomb blast in August in Afghanistan.
No other group came forward to claim responsibility.
“It was a deafening explosion, and I fell on the ground,” said Shabbir Afridi, 40, a government employee who was standing near the mosque at the time of the attack.
The mosque was nearly full, with more than 300 worshippers filling the rows when the blast struck in Police Lines, a heavily guarded neighborhood that is home to several important government and military buildings. An office of the counterterrorism department is nearby, and officials said they were investigating how the suicide bomber managed to breach several security checkpoints to reach the mosque.
The roof caved in from the impact, trapping people under the debris.
“Most of the people are still trapped under the rubble. We fear that the number of casualties could increase,” said Akbar Khan, an official of the Edhi Foundation, a charity that runs a rescue service.
At least 157 people were wounded, according to hospital officials, many of them rushed to the nearby Lady Reading Hospital, a staterun medical facility.