Islamabad, Pakistan – A religious gathering celebrating the birthday of the Islamic Prophet Mohammad ended in a deadly attack in Pakistan on Friday when a suicide bomber detonated a powerful device near a mosque, killing at least 52 people and wounding about 70 others. Another attack elsewhere in the country, targeting a different mosque, left at least five people dead.
Local officials said the explosion in Mastung district of Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province, which has seen a decades-long nationalist insurgency and several attacks by the ISIS faction in the region, targeted the procession as worshipers were leaving the mosque.
Security officers examine the site of a suicide attack on a procession marking the birthday of the Islamic Prophet Mohammed in Mastung district, Balochistan, Pakistan, September 29, 2023. AFP via Getty
No group immediately claimed responsibility for Friday’s blast, but the Pakistani Taliban, a collection of religious extremist subgroups separate from the Afghan Taliban but closely allied with the group that retook power in Afghanistan in August 2021, declined the responsibility.
ISIS-Khorasan, or ISIS-K, an affiliate of the terror group that operates in Pakistan and Afghanistan, is also active in the province and has reported previous deadly attacks in Balochistan and elsewhere.
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The Baloch nationalists, who have been fighting for independence in the oil-rich province bordering Afghanistan and Iran for years, have typically targeted security officials rather than civilians.
Videos broadcast by Pakistani television channels and posted on social media showed victims of the blast covered in blood and body parts scattered across the blast site.
In this photo provided by the District Police Office, a boy injured in a bomb blast is treated at a hospital in Mastung near Quetta, Pakistan, on September 29, 2023. District Police Office/AP
Dr. Saeed Mirwani, chief executive of the local Nawab Ghous Bakhsh Raisani Memorial Hospital, told reporters that dozens of injured people were being treated at the facility, while more than 20 other seriously injured people were being sent to the provincial capital Quetta for further treatment.
“The process of transferring bodies and injured persons is underway,” said the hospital’s managing director.
Hours after the suicide bombing in Balochistan province, at least one other explosion rocked a mosque in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, also bordering Afghanistan, killing at least five people, a regional official said. The roof of the mosque collapsed in the explosion and around 30 to 40 people were buried under rubble.
Provincial government interim information minister Feroze Jamal said the attack involved two suicide bombers, one was killed in a shootout with police at the mosque entrance in Hangu town and another then detonated his explosive device inside the mosque building as people gathered to tend to the wounded.
Pakistan’s President Arif Alvi condemned both attacks and called on authorities to provide all possible assistance to the wounded and the victims’ families.
In a statement, Caretaker Home Minister Sarfraz Bugti condemned the bomb attack and called it a “heinous act” to attack people in the religious procession.
A relative mourns a victim of a suicide bombing after a bomber attacked a procession marking the birthday of the Islamic Prophet Mohammed in Mastung district of Balochistan province at a hospital in Quetta, Pakistan, on September 29, 2023. BANARAS KHAN/AFP/Getty
The government had declared Friday a national holiday to mark the birthday of Prophet Mohammad.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said it was “unacceptable that residents of Balochistan are forced to live in constant fear amid the deteriorating law and order situation.”
“Those responsible for this heinous attack must be brought to justice. However, HRCP believes that excessive securitization will not solve the security problem in the province,” it said in a statement shared on social media.
Shortly after news of the blasts in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, police in Pakistan’s most populous province of Punjab and its largest city Karachi said they would step up security around mosques during Friday prayers.
Friday’s bombing was among the worst attacks in Pakistan in a decade. In 2014, a Taliban attack on an army-run school in the northwestern city of Peshawar killed 147 people, mostly schoolchildren.
In late January, more than 100 people, mostly police officers, were killed at a mosque in a high-security compound that housed Peshawar police headquarters. In July, at least 54 people were killed when a suicide bomber sent by ISIS-K targeted a pro-Taliban party election rally in the northwest of the country.