A powerful bomb went off near a mosque and police offices in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar, killing at least three people and wounding some 70 worshippers, police and government officials said.
Most of the victims were police officers, the officials told the Associated Press news agency.
Authorities said it the explosion was a suicide attack.
Reuters news agency placed the number of injured at 90.
The explosion reportedly took place during afternoon prayers when the mosque was packed with worshipers.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing in Peshawar, the capital of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan.
Zafar Khan, a local police officer, said rescuers are trying to get the wounded to a nearby hospital. He said it appeared to have been a suicide bombing, but an investigation will provide more details.
Dawn newspaper reported that many of the injured were taken to the Lady Reading Hospital.
Khan said several of the wounded were listed in critical condition at a hospital and there were fears the death toll would rise.
Suspicion in such attacks falls most often on the Pakistani Taliban, who have in the past claimed similar bombings.
The Pakistani Taliban, are known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP, and are separate group but also a close ally of the Afghan Taliban, who seized power in neighboring Afghanistan in August 2021 as U.S. and NATO troops were in the final stages of their pullout from the country after 20 years of war.
The TTP has waged an insurgency in Pakistan over the past 15 years, fighting for stricter enforcement of Islamic laws in the country, the release of their members who are in government custody and a reduction of Pakistani military presence in the country’s former tribal regions.
Last year, a suicide attack inside a mosque in Peshawar’s Kocha Risaldar area claimed 56 lives.
This is a developing story. More details to follow.
