A powerful bomb exploded in a crowd of people celebrating the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday in southwestern Pakistan on Friday, killing at least 52 people and wounding nearly 70 others, authorities said. It was one of the deadliest attacks in recent years.
TV footage and videos on social media showed an open area near a mosque strewn with the shoes of the dead and wounded. Some of the bodies had been covered with bedsheets. Residents and rescuers were seen rushing the wounded to hospitals, where a state of emergency had been declared and appeals were being issued for blood donations.
Some of the wounded were in critical condition, government administrator Atta Ullah said. Thirty bodies were taken to one hospital and 22 were counted at another, Abdul Rasheed, the District Health Officer in Mastung, said. Also Friday, a blast ripped through a mosque located on the premises of a police station in Hangu, a district in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, killing at least two people and wounding seven, said Shah Raz Khan, a local police officer.
Pakistan’s President Arif Alvi condemned the attacks and asked authorities to provide all possible assistance to the wounded and the victims’ families. No one immediately claimed responsibility for Friday’s bombing, but Pakistani Taliban quickly distanced themselves from it. Known at Tehreek-e-Taliban, or TTP, the Pakistani Taliban is separate from the Afghan Taliban but closely allied to the group which seized power in neighboring Afghanistan in August 2021 as U.S. and NATO troops were in the final stages of their pullout from the country after 20 years of war.
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