PESHAWAR – A bomb attack on a packed mosque adjoining Akhun Panjoo Baba’s shrine in Nowshera district’s Akbarpura town, killed 10 people and injured 38 as it ripped through Friday prayers. Hundreds of people were coming out of the mosque or waiting for a charity meal (langar) when the bomb, planted inside the building, went off.
Witnesses described scenes of panic, the mosque’s windows and doors blown out by the strength of the explosion and blood sprayed on the building walls. “I was distributing rice among the devotees when suddenly a huge blast occurred and I remember seeing people running and falling in panic,” Suleman Shah, 30, a jeweller, said.
An AFP reporter at the site said, “There were blood marks in the mosque and cooked rice was scattered at some places.” The blast had mangled the ceiling fans and all doors and windows of the mosque building were broken, he said. “We have received nine dead bodies and 28 injured, there is one child among the dead,” Lady Reading Hospital chief executive Abdul Hameed Afridi said.
He said another 26 were injured, including five children, adding that seven of the injured were said to be in critical conditions. Senior minister Bashir Bilour told reporters after visiting the site that it was a timed device, AFP reported. “Terrorists have targeted a place where there were only poor people and no high-value target.
What they want, we don’t understand But we will continue fighting them and will never surrender to them,” Bilour said. A senior police officer and expert on explosives, Hukam Khan, said the bomb weighed about 2.5 kilogrammes, adding that it was a fixed timed-device.
Inputs included from news agencies
