PESHAWAR: A powerful bomb exploded Friday at a mosque near a building housing police offices in northwestern Pakistan, killing at least seven people and wounding more than 30, police and rescue officials said.
Bilal Faizi, a senior rescue official, said the bombing occurred in Kohat, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan.
Most of those wounded were worshippers, he said.
The victims were taken to a nearby hospital where authorities declared an emergency to handle the influx of casualties. Local police said the explosion was powerful enough to badly damage nearby shops and homes.
Footage posted on social media showed the mosque's roof had collapsed. Rescuers and residents could be seen pulling injured people from the rubble and carrying them to ambulances.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but suspicion was likely to fall on the Pakistani Taliban, formally known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP.
Pakistani Taliban have stepped up attacks on police and civilians in recent years. In 2023, a suicide bomber killed 101 people in an attack inside a mosque in Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
The group is separate from but allied with Afghanistan's Taliban, which returned to power in 2021. Pakistan often accuses Kabul of sheltering the TTP and turning a blind eye to cross-border militant attacks. The government in Kabul has denied the allegations.
