Death Toll in Pakistan Bombing Rises to 100

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) —
Rescue workers and army soldiers stand as crane drills on a collapsed roof to search for victims, after a suicide blast in a mosque in Peshawar, Pakistan, Tuesday. (REUTERS/Fayaz Aziz)

The death toll from a suicide bombing in northwestern Pakistan rose to 100 on Tuesday. The attack, on a Sunni mosque inside a major police facility, was one of the deadliest targeting Pakistani security forces in recent years.

More bodies were retrieved overnight and early Tuesday, according to Mohammad Asim, a government hospital spokesman in Peshawar, and several of those critically injured died. “Most of them were policemen,” Asim said of the victims. The bombing also wounded more than 150 people.

Bilal Faizi, the chief rescue official, said rescue teams were still working Tuesday at the site as more people are believed trapped inside. Mourners were burying the victim at different graveyards in the city and elsewhere.

It was not clear how the bomber was able to reach the mosque, which is in a walled compound, in a high security zone with other government buildings.

The investigation will show “how the terrorist entered the mosque,” said Ghulam Ali, the provincial governor in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, of which Peshawar is the capital.

“Yes, it was a security lapse,” he added.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who is on a visit to the Middle East, tweeted his condolences, saying the bombing in Peshawar was a “horrific attack.”

“Terrorism for any reason at any place is indefensible,” he said.

To Read The Full Story

Are you already a subscriber?
Click to log in!