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The damaged mosque in Peshawar after the attack
Photo: FAYAZ AZIZ / REUTERS
At least 60 people have been killed in a bomb attack on a mosque in north-west Pakistan.
Another 200 people were injured in the city of Peshawar, police officers and a clinic spokesman said on Friday of the dpa news agency.
The Ministry of the Interior put security forces across the country on increased alert.
In the evening, the terrorist militia "Islamic State" (IS) claimed responsibility for the attack in a message on the IS mouthpiece Amak.
According to a local police chief, two armed suicide bombers fought their way into the mosque, where they detonated their bombs.
Local TV stations showed footage from a surveillance camera of a young man firing at a police officer before storming into the mosque.
"Smoke and screams could be heard everywhere," one survivor told Pakistani TV station Dunya.
"Then I saw several bodies lying on top of each other and a river of blood on the ground." The noise of the explosion was "deafening," said another eyewitness, who was driving in front of the mosque on his motorcycle, to the local station "Geo".
"Before I knew what was happening, I heard gunshots and explosions."
Prime Minister Imran Khan promises quick help
According to police, it is said to be a Shiite mosque in a predominantly Sunni neighborhood.
IS is active in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The terrorist militia first appeared in Afghanistan in 2015.
Since then, she has wanted to establish a "province" there and on Pakistani territory called IS-Khorasan.
Followers view Shia Muslims as apostates and regularly carry out brutal attacks on their communities.
Prime Minister Imran Khan strongly condemned the attack, his office said.
He promised the victims quick help.
Pakistan's President Arif Alvi also condemned the attack and expressed his condolences to the families of the victims.
Since the militant Islamist Taliban took power in neighboring Afghanistan, attacks in the border region have recently increased.
In particular, the IS and the Pakistani Taliban claim attacks for themselves.
The border province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was long considered a troubled region of Pakistan, but has long been quiet following a military offensive against Islamist terrorist groups in 2014.
In autumn 2020, many people were killed and more than 100 injured in a similar attack in a Koran school in Peshawar.
At that time, the IS was suspected.
Residents in Peshawar remember the attacks of the brutal attack by Pakistani Taliban, who also killed more than 150 people, mostly children, in a school in Peshawar in 2014.
kfr/dpa
