A deadly explosion occurred on Monday January 30 during midday prayers at a mosque in Peshawar, northwestern Pakistan. It left at least 28 dead and 150 injured, mostly police officers, according to Haji Ghulam Ali, governor of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, of which Peshawar is the capital. Part of the roof and a wall of the mosque, located inside the police headquarters, collapsed in the blast, and an operation was underway to rescue people trapped under the blast. debris, noted an AFP journalist.
Shahid Ali, a 47-year-old policeman who survived the explosion, told AFP that the detonation came seconds after the imam had started the prayer. According to the police, the explosion occurred in the second row of the assembled worshipers. Peshawar police chief Muhammad Ijaz Khan told AFP that 300 to 400 people are usually present at prayer time. “Our priority is to rescue the people trapped under the rubble,” Shaffiullah Khan, a senior administrative official in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, of which Peshawar is the capital, told AFP.
Several years of relative calm
The police headquarters is one of the best guarded areas in Peshawar. It also houses the premises of various intelligence agencies. Demining teams were on site to examine the possibility that the explosion was caused by a suicide bomber.
“The terrorists want to create panic by targeting those who are fulfilling their duty to defend Pakistan,” Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said in a statement. Those who fight Pakistan will be wiped off the face of the earth. »
In March 2022, a suicide attack claimed by EI-K, the local branch of the Islamic State (IS) organization, in a Shiite mosque in Peshawar left 64 dead. According to the police, the suicide bomber was an Afghan national living in Pakistan with his family for several years, who had prepared the attack in Afghanistan. Security has been deteriorating in Pakistan for the past few months, especially since the Taliban took power in Afghanistan in August 2021.
Peshawar, about fifty kilometers from the border with Afghanistan, was ravaged by attacks almost daily during the first half of the 2010s. After several years of relative calm, the attacks resumed with renewed vigour, carried out by the Pakistani Taliban of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the EI-K or Baloch separatist groups. Pakistan blames the Taliban for letting these groups use Afghan soil to plan their attacks, something Kabul has repeatedly denied.
The TTP, a movement distinct from that of the new Afghan leaders, but which shares common roots with it, has claimed responsibility for several attacks in recent months. One of his worst atrocities, which left a lasting mark on Pakistan’s national consciousness, was the massacre of around 150 people, mostly schoolchildren, in Peshawar in December 2014.
