PESHAWAR, Pakistan – At least 57 people were killed and more than 100 injured Friday after an explosion tore apart a Shiite mosque in Peshawar, northwest Pakistan, according to police and doctors at the city’s main hospital.
Police said they were still gathering what had happened, but that at least one gunman on a motorcycle had killed two police officers before entering the mosque and blowing up what appeared to be a suicide vest.
The attack was one of the deadliest in years, hitting Peshawar, a city of about two million people near Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan. In 2014, nine Taliban gunmen killed more than 140 people at the state military school and college there.
“We are trying to understand and determine what happened,” Moazam Ja, the provincial police chief, said on Friday. A police officer in the capital, Ejaz Khan, said police had found pallets, empty cartridges and parts of the pistol used in the initial attacks.
Mr Hahn said there appeared to be two assailants, both carrying and detonating explosives. “We have provided video surveillance recordings and we will study them very carefully,” he said.
Residents said they heard a huge explosion at the main mosque in Kocha Risaldar, a predominantly Shiite neighborhood in the city.
Police cordoned off the mosque as rescue workers took the dead and wounded to Lady Reding’s main hospital.
Hospital spokesman Mohammed Asim Khan said 10 of these people were in a “very critical condition”.
No group has claimed responsibility for the blast, but Pakistani intelligence officials said Friday that the attack was most likely carried out by the Islamic State branch in the Khorasan Islamic State or ISIS-K region.
“We see ISIS-K as the biggest threat, bigger than the illegal Pakistani militant group, Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan,” Mr Ja said.
Khorasan Islamic State announced its creation in eastern Afghanistan in 2015 and was initially led by former members of the Pakistani Taliban. Last fall, the Islamic State group carried out high-profile bombings in two Shiite mosques in Afghanistan, killing and injuring dozens.
The Afghan Taliban, after coming to power in August, launched a series of operations against the group, which probably prompted its fighters to transfer their operations to Pakistan, intelligence officials said.
Ismail Khan reports from Peshawar and Salman Masood from Islamabad.