At least 53 people were killed and 123 others injured when a suicide bomber apparently blew himself up during Friday prayers at a mosque in Pakistan’s restive tribal Khyber Agency, officials said. This was the deadliest terrorist attack in Pakistan in three months and the first during the Ramzan fasting month.
The blast took place at the Jamia Masjid at Ghondi in the Jamrud area of
Khyber Agency, 25 km from Peshawar, capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province. The attackers struck as worshippers had started leaving after the Friday prayers, but hundreds of people were still inside. A security official estimated that between 500 to 700 people were inside the mosque when the explosion occurred. The entire building collapsed immediately afterwards.
Some officials claimed that a bomb might have been planted at the mosque rather than it being a suicide attack. “There are body parts, there is mutilated flesh, so we can’t say whether it was a planted bomb or a suicide attack,” one of them said.
Also on Friday, a US drone strike killed four militants in a Pakistani tribal area, officials said.