The death toll in a suicide bombing in northwestern Pakistan on Friday rose to 36, a regional official said on Saturday, with over 30 wounded during the attack on a packed mosque.
At least five of those killed were children, an official added.
Jamat-ul-Ahrar, a splinter group of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was carried out to avenge the deaths of 13 of its members in 2009.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, in a statement, expressed grief over the loss of lives and called it a “cowardly attack by terrorists (who) cannot shatter the government’s resolve to eliminate terrorism from the country.”
A curfew has been imposed in the area after search operations were initiated.
A second regional official confirmed the bombing in the village of Payee Khan, in the troubled Mohmand region of the lawless Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) bordering Afghanistan.
“A portion of the mosque and veranda collapsed in the blast and fell on worshippers. We are still retrieving bodies and the injured from rubble of the mosque building,” Naveed Akbar, deputy administrator of Mohmand Agency said.
A suicide bomber killed at least 16 people and wounded more than 20 during Friday prayers at a Pakistan mosque in a tribal area bordering Afghanistan, a regional official said.
“The suicide bomber was in crowded mosque, he shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’, and then there was a huge blast,” Naveed Akbar, deputy administrator of Mohmand agency, told Reuters.
Another regional official confirmed the blast and said at least 24 people were wounded.
Pakistan’s frontier regions, which are deeply conservative and hard to access due to rough terrain, have long been the sanctuary of fighters from al Qaeda, the Taliban and other Islamist groups
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