According to local police and emergency services, at least 30 people were killed in a suicide bombing attack in the North-western Pakistani city of Peshawar.
The attack was carried out on a Shiite mosque during midday Friday prayers, when the mosque was filled with worshippers. No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack. The attack is one of the worst suffered in years by Pakistan’s minority Shiite community, which has regularly faced attacks by the numerous hard-line Sunni militant groups operating in Pakistan and neighbouring Afghanistan.
In recent years, harder crackdowns by the Pakistani army have reduced the number of attacks by Islamist groups in the country. However, western intelligence experts accuse the military of continuing to fund some of these groups as part of their efforts to destabilize India and Afghanistan.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan condemned the bombing, according to his office.