More than 30 people were killed and at least 160 injured in an explosion at a Shia mosque in Islamabad, officials in Pakistan’s capital said. The attack struck during Friday prayers and was the deadliest blast in the city in more than a decade. It came just three months after an attack near a judicial complex that killed at least 12 people.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif condemned the bombing and said he had instructed interior minister Mohsin Naqvi to “conduct a full investigation into the incident and immediately identify those responsible.” Police said the death toll could rise—hundreds of members of the Shia minority were inside the mosque at the time of the explosion, and dozens of the wounded were taken to hospital in critical condition.
Allama Raja Nasir, an opposition leader in Pakistan’s Senate and a cleric representing a Shia political party, blamed the authorities for what happened. “Such a terrorist act in the federal capital is not only evidence of a serious failure to protect human lives, but also a major question mark over the performance of the administration and law-enforcement agencies,” he wrote on social media platform X.
Until the November attack, Islamabad and other major cities had largely remained on the sidelines of the violence that in recent years has gripped the country’s border regions. According to the New Delhi-based South Asia Terrorism Portal, Pakistani Taliban militants and Baloch separatists killed more than 1,800 security personnel and civilians last year.
Last week, militants from the Baloch Liberation Army carried out a coordinated series of attacks across Balochistan—a province roughly the size of Germany—that officials said killed around four dozen people. In response, Pakistan’s military said it had killed more than 200 suspected Baloch separatists.
The blast in Islamabad struck as Uzbekistan’s president, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, was attending a joint event with Sharif during a two-day official visit to Pakistan.
Militants linked to Islamic State—Khorasan and the Pakistani Taliban—groups that Islamabad says are based in Afghanistan—have repeatedly carried out attacks against the Shia minority.