PESHAWAR: A blast tore through a mosque in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s South Waziristan district on Friday, leaving at least four worshippers injured including district chief of Jamiat Ulema Islam-Fazl (JUI-F), police said.
Abdullah Nadeem, leader of the JUI-F, was believed to be the target of the blast. The politician has been hospitalised with serious injuries, said a district police chief, DPO Asif Bahadur.
The police officer added that two children were among those injured in the blast. The culprit behind the explosion was not immediately clear.
Attacks have been escalating in Pakistan’s border regions with Afghanistan in recent months.
Last month, a suicide bomber killed six worshippers Maulana Hamidul Haq Haqqani — son of Maulana Samiul Haq and chief of his own faction of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (JUI-S) during Friday prayer at the Darul Uloom Haqqani in Nowshera district.
This week in Balochistan, militants hijacked a train and held passengers hostage in a day-long standoff with security forces, leaving at least 26 hostages and four security personnel dead.
Similar attacks have increased in Pakistan since the Taliban authorities returned to power in Afghanistan in August 2021.
Islamabad has time again urged Kabul to not allow its territory to be used by terrorist groups to carry out attacks against Pakistan — vehemently denied by the Afghan Taliban-led administration.
The two nations share a porous border spanning around 2,500 kilometres with several crossing points which hold significance as a key element of regional trade and relations between the people across both sides of the fence.
The diplomatic effort is coupled with ongoing kinetic action against terrorists by security forces who continue to engage in operations, eliminating a number of militants and thwarting multiple infiltration attempts.
However, the issue of terrorism remains a key issue for Pakistan which has urged Afghanistan to prevent its soil from being used by groups such as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) to carry out attacks inside the former’s territory.
— With additional input from Reuters
