Peshawar, Pakistan – Naib Rehman lies on his hospital bed with one leg in a cast. The 44-year-old recalls that a massive explosion rocked the mosque in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar as he stood with 300 other worshipers for afternoon prayers.
At least 100 people, most of them police officers, were killed and more than 225 people injured in Monday’s suicide bombing, the deadliest in a decade as attacks by armed groups mount.
“I was standing with my friends as the blast threw us away, and just as we were trying to get our bearings, the entire roof collapsed in a matter of seconds,” Rehman, who works in the police telecommunications department, told Al Jazeera.
“We were lucky enough to find a way and crawled out, but my leg was badly injured,” Rehman said. Like most of the wounded, he was taken to the town’s main hospital, Lady Reading.
Rescuers clear rubble at the site of the attack on the mosque [Abid Hussain/Al Jazeera]
Rehman said he was determined to move on.
“Even though I’ve lost a few of my friends, that won’t put me off,” he said as he lay in a hospital ward with seven other patients. “I’m going back to my work. That is my duty. I will not be afraid of this attack.”
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has condemned the attack and promised “tight action”. Officials have announced an investigation into the blast in a high-security police area.
“The sheer scale of the human tragedy is unimaginable,” Sharif tweeted after his visit to Peshawar. “This is nothing less than an attack on Pakistan.”
A faction of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also known as the Pakistani Taliban, claimed responsibility for the attack, but a TTP spokesman later denied any role in the blast.
A tenuous, month-long truce between the TTP and Pakistan collapsed last year, and the group has since intensified its attacks on Pakistani security forces.
Yashwa Tariq, a 28-year-old police officer, was on duty in Peshawar when he received a call from a friend Monday afternoon to say his house near the mosque had been damaged in an explosion.
“My heart just sank,” said Tariq, hurrying home. He described what he found as rubble and utter chaos.
“All my neighbors and friends tried to clear the rubble with their bare hands,” he said. “I managed to find my son who was injured, completely covered in dust and unable to open his eyes.”
Tariq’s wife, sister and grandmother were trapped in another room under the collapsed roof. The police officer managed to get his son out and took him to Lady Reading Hospital where he prayed the rest of his family would survive.
His wife, son and sister did, but his maternal grandmother, Rasheeda Bibi, was killed.
“My wife has fractured both her legs,” Tariq told Al Jazeera. “My sister has a laceration on her head. My son is suffering from trauma. My grandmother has died. I have nowhere to go back. I don’t have a home anymore.”
Several other houses next to the mosque where police officers live were also damaged.
The force of the blast was so violent that it brought down the roof over the mosque’s main prayer hall, where nearly 300 worshipers were about to begin their prayers.
Kashif Aftab Abbasi, a senior superintendent of police operations in Peshawar, confirmed to Al Jazeera that initial police investigations revealed the blast was caused by a suicide bomber and the vast majority of deaths were caused by the roof collapsing.
More than 90 percent of those who died worked for the police.
The Police Lines Mosque blast was the first major attack in Peshawar since March, when a Shia mosque was attacked by the Islamic State of Khorasan province, killing more than 60 people.
Muhammed Asim, a spokesman for Lady Reading Hospital, said the situation at the facility on Monday was “overwhelming” as ambulances brought droves of dead and wounded.
In contrast to Rehman, Yasir Khan – a police officer who also lives in Police Lines, a secured part of Peshawar which is home to key government facilities – says the incident has shaken his confidence.
“We are aware of the attacks on police and security officials,” the 29-year-old told Al Jazeera while standing near the rubble of the mosque. “We expect attacks on checkpoints. But we never imagined that an attack would take place inside our premises. It’s so heavily guarded.”
Kashif Aftab Abbasi, senior superintendent of police operations, says most of the deaths were caused when the mosque’s roof collapsed [Abid Hussain/Al Jazeera]
The decision to quit his job never crossed his mind, he said. “This is the job that feeds us. My father was also in the police force. What else should I do if not that? My wife asked me to quit the job and move back to our village, but I said her duty comes first.”
Kamran Khan, a government teacher, said that when he saw the news of the blast on TV, he rushed to the site of the blast at the Police Lines compound. His brother Irfanullah and his cousin Shafiq worked for the police.
His brother was among those killed while his cousin was admitted to Lady Reading Hospital.
“We are eight siblings and Irfanullah was third,” Khan said. “He worked as a government teacher for the longest time, like me, but he always aspired to wear a uniform.”
Irfanullah, who went to the police in 2010, is survived by five children, two sons and three daughters.
“I used to try to stop him from joining the force,” Khan said. “But now, not only will I encourage his son to follow in his father’s footsteps, I will urge my own son to do the same. I want them to serve the nation and honor Irfanullah’s name.”
Abid Hussain is Al Jazeera’s digital correspondent in Pakistan. He tweets @abidhussayn.