Suicide bombing at Islamabad Shiite mosque kills at least 20 people

6 days ago 10

A blast at a Shiite mosque in Pakistan's capital Islamabad on Friday killed at least 20 people and wounded more than 90, a police source said.

Images from the site ​showed bloodied bodies lying on the carpeted mosque floor ‍surrounded by shards of glass, debris and panicked worshippers.

The explosion hit the mosque during Friday prayers, police official Zafar Iqbal said.

A security source told AFP that a suicide attacker was responsible for the blast.

"The attacker was stopped at the gate and detonated himself," the source said on condition of anonymity.

An AFP photographer outside the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) hospital saw dozens of wounded people arriving.

Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif condemned the blast, expressing "deep grief" for the explosion.

Shiites, who are in the minority in the predominantly Sunni Muslim nation of 241 million, have been targeted in sectarian violence in ‍the past, including by the Sunni Islamist militant group Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, which ‌considers them heretics.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP and Reuters)

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