A suicide bombing at a Shiite mosque in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, has killed at least 30 people and wounded more than 130, police said on Friday.
The explosion occurred after Friday prayers, when mosques across the country are typically crowded. A senior police official told AFP the casualty toll was “expected to rise further.”
A security source stated, “The attacker was stopped at the gate and detonated himself.”
AFP journalists at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences hospital saw several adults and children being carried in on stretchers, with medics and bystanders helping unload blood-soaked victims from ambulances and private vehicles.
Armed security forces were deployed outside the mosque, where pools of blood were visible on the ground. Videos shared on social media showed several bodies near the mosque’s entrance, with debris scattered inside the prayer hall.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif condemned the blast, vowing to find and bring the perpetrators to justice. No group has immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.
Pakistan is a Sunni-majority nation, but its Shiite minority, which makes up 10–15% of the population, has frequently been targeted in sectarian violence.
The bombing comes amid growing insurgencies in Pakistan’s southern Balochistan province and northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, near the Afghan border. Islamabad accuses separatist and Islamist militant groups of using Afghan territory as a safe haven, a claim repeatedly denied by Afghanistan’s Taliban government.
This is the deadliest attack in Islamabad since November, when a suicide blast outside a court killed 12 people.
