According to a police source, a suicide explosion at a Shiite mosque in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, killed at least 30 people and injured over 130 more on Friday.
The explosion happened after Friday prayers, when mosques around the nation are crowded with worshippers, a senior police officer told AFP on condition of anonymity.
He stated that the number of casualties was “expected to rise further.”
“The attacker was stopped at the gate and detonated himself,” a security source told AFP.
At the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences hospital, AFP reporters witnessed a number of adults and children being carried in by their arms and legs or on stretchers.
Bystanders and medical personnel assisted in removing victims’ blood-stained clothing from the back of cars and ambulances. At least one casualty showed up in a car’s boot.
As they arrived at the hospital’s tightly guarded emergency department, friends and family of the injured wailed.
Another group of AFP reporters observed armed security personnel outside the mosque, where bloodstains were apparent on the floor.
Social media videos, which AFP was unable to confirm right away, showed a number of victims laying next to the mosque’s front gate, along with people and debris strewn all around the red-carpeted prayer hall.
Shehbaz Sharif, the prime minister of Pakistan, denounced the explosion and promised that those responsible would be apprehended.
The attack, which occurred as Pakistan’s security forces fight escalating insurgencies in both the country’s northern and southern districts that border Afghanistan, was not immediately attributed to any particular group.
Although Shiites make up between 10 and 15 percent of the population in Pakistan, which has a Sunni majority, they have historically been the focus of attacks across the region.
Increasing insurgencies: According to Islamabad, the Pakistani Taliban and other Islamist militants in the northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which is close to Islamabad, as well as separatist armed organizations in southern Balochistan have exploited Afghan territory as a safe haven from which to launch operations.
The Taliban administration in Afghanistan has consistently refuted Pakistan’s charges, and ties between the two countries have deteriorated as a result of frequent border clashes between their soldiers.
A suicide explosion outside a court in November was the last significant attack to strike the city in almost three years, killing twelve people and injuring scores more.
In southern Balochistan, where separatist terrorists claim to have carried out operations last week that killed 36 civilians and 22 security officers, Pakistani forces are also under pressure.
Nearly 200 militants were reportedly slain by security personnel during a series of counteroperations that followed those attacks.
