More than 30 people have been killed in a suicide bombing at a mosque in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad. Pakistani authorities have accused India and Afghanistan of complicity in the attack.
The blast ripped through the Khadija Tul Kubra mosque on Friday morning, as the building was packed with Shia worshippers. At least 31 people were killed and 169 injured, according to emergency services.
The attacker was stopped by security guards on his way into the mosque, but managed to detonate his device “in the last row of worshippers,” Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Asif said in a statement on X.
“The perpetrators of the blast must be identified and brought to justice,” Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said. “No one will be allowed to spread violence and instability in the country.”
While no group has taken responsibility for the attack, Asif claimed that the perpetrator “has been proven to have been coming and going from Afghanistan,” and that the “threads of the alliance between India and the Taliban are being uncovered.”
Shebaz’s spokesman, Mosharraf Zaidi, declared that the bombing “is only the latest in a series of murderous terrorist attacks orchestrated by India” and its “terrorist proxies.”
Pakistan is currently waging a counterinsurgency campaign against the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), a group of militant separatists based in the province of Balochistan, which borders Iran and Afghanistan. Pakistani officials have repeatedly accused India of backing the BLA, an accusation that New Delhi firmly denies.
Pakistani forces stepped up their campaign against the BLA last weekend, killing 177 militants – and more than 30 civilians – in response to a series of recent attacks that left 50 people dead. Like Friday’s mosque bombing, these BLA attacks were blamed on India.
“We categorically reject the baseless allegations made by Pakistan, which are nothing but its usual tactics to deflect attention from its own internal failings,” Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman Randhir Jaiswal said on Sunday. “Instead of parroting frivolous claims each time there is a violent incident, it would do better to focus on addressing long-standing demands of its people in the region. Its record of suppression, brutality and violation of human rights is well known,”
New Delhi has yet to respond to Asif’s and Zaidi’s latest accusations.
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