By Asif Shahzad
ISLAMABAD, Feb 6 (Reuters) – A suicide bomber killed at least 31 people and wounded almost 170 others during Friday prayers in a Shi’ite Muslim mosque in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad, police and government officials said.
Images from the site showed bloodied bodies lying on the carpeted mosque floor surrounded by shards of glass, debris and panicked worshippers.
Dozens more wounded were lying in the gardens of the Khadija Tul Kubra Imambargah, in a semi-urban area on the outskirts of Islamabad, as people called for help.
Bombings are rare in the heavily guarded capital, although Pakistan has been hit by a rising wave of militancy in the past few years.
“The death toll in the blast has risen. A total of 31 people have lost their lives. The number of wounded brought to hospitals has risen to 169,” Deputy Commissioner Islamabad Irfan Memon said in a statement.
Two police officials said the attacker was stopped at the gate of the mosque before detonating the bomb. They asked not to be identified as they were not authorised to speak to the media.
Shi’ites, 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.
A suicide bombing on November 11 killed 12 people in Islamabad and wounded 27 others in an attack Pakistan said was carried out by an Afghan national. No group claimed responsibility for that attack.
(Reporting by Asif Shahzad in Islamabad and Mushtaq Ali in Peshawar; Writing by Sakshi Dayal and Saad Sayeed; Editing by Alex Richardson, Toby Chopra and Andrew Heavens)
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