Suicide assault team strikes inside Shia mosque in Peshawar

A suicide assault team has killed at least 15 people after one of the bombers detonated his vest inside a Shia mosque in the provincial capital of Peshawar in northwestern Pakistan. Today’s attack in Peshawar is the third major suicide bombing in the country in the past six days.

Pakistani officials said that three suicide bombers armed with AK-47s attacked the mosque in Peshawar as the Shia worshipers were conducting Friday prayers. The suicide assault team traded gunfire with a security team at the entrance of the mosque; two suicide bombers and two guards were killed, according to Dawn.

The surviving member of the suicide assault team “entered the mosque and blew himself up in front of the worshippers,” the Superintendent of Police told Dawn. During the attack, 15 people were killed and more than two dozen were wounded, SAMAA reported.

The Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan and allies such as the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan have executed multiple suicide attacks at mosques, funerals, religious processions, weddings, and hospitals in both Pakistan and Afghanistan over the past several years.

Today’s attack in Peshawar is the third major suicide bombing and the second suicide assault in Pakistan in the past six days.

On June 16, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a Pakistani terror group closely allied with al Qaeda and the Taliban, executed a complex assault against female university students in Quetta, the provincial capital of Baluchistan. The assault began when a female suicide bomber detonated on a bus transporting female students. Then another suicide bomber detonated at the hospital where the wounded were taken, while a team of fighters ambushed security personnel arriving at the scene. At least 25 people, including 14 female students, were killed in the assault.

The Lashkar-e-Jhangvi has claimed credit for numerous terror attacks in Pakistan, and has often targeted Shiites. The terror group has released videos of executions of captured Shia prisoners.

On June 18, a suicide bomber detonated his explosives at a funeral in Mardan in northwestern Pakistan. A member of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa provincial assembly was among 35 people killed in the deadly blast.

The newly elected Pakistani government, which is run by the Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz, is continuing to pursue peace talks with the Taliban and other “militant” groups despite the series of deadly suicide bombings that have taken place over the past week.

Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of FDD's Long War Journal.

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3 Comments

  • mike says:

    These clowns are beyond rehabilitating. They deserve cartoon caricutures deploring their way of religion

  • mike merlo says:

    So when will the Iranians ‘see fit’ to come to the aid of their ‘fellow’ Shiites in Pakistan?

  • Eric says:

    When a group claiming to be a religious movement tries to use bombings inside churches to enforce their point, they are blatantly admitting that their own point does not stand up to merit on its own, and needs to be imposed on people unwillingly.
    I shake my head in sad disbelief to the realization that there are not enough decent people in a nation of 180 million to put a band of evil cut-throats to the sword.
    Violence is endemic in muslim societies. The people condone it to such a degree as to endanger their own futures, and are content with that destiny for reasons that beg reconsideration of the original question?
    Are we supposed to blow ourselves up to please god? If no, then why are people being talked into that act of self-destruction for a religious cause? Because it arms the cause with a potent threat, and that mayhem can be used to further a greater good bringing another form of fascism to power in the middle east? Salafism? God cares what for Salafism?
    The whole premise of Al Qaeda’s and family’s activism as a force for change was a critique of the corruption in the west. They then seek to enforce their point with atrocities against the public. What was their point about corruption? That it’s bad for the people? CAVEMEN! And muslim people everywhere see this, and just shrug their shoulders and say “Well, then. OK”
    Not much of a future there.

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