By Orowo Victoria Ojieh with agency report
A bomb exploded inside a Shiite Muslim mosque in Pakistan’s northwestern city of Peshawar on Friday, killing at least 30 worshippers and wounding 80 critically.
Ali Asghar who is a witness said he saw the attacker enter the mosque before Friday prayers and open “fire with a pistol”, picking out the worshippers “one-by-one”, he “then blew himself up”,
Peshawar police chief Muhammed Ejaz Khan said the violence started when two armed attackers opened fire on police outside the mosque.
One attacker and one policeman were killed in the gun battle, and another policeman was wounded. The remaining attacker then entered the mosque and detonated a bomb.
Muhammad Asim Khan, a spokesman for Peshawar’s Lady Reading Hospital said “we have declared an emergency at the hospitals and more injured are being brought”.
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A spokesman for Prime Minister Imran Khan’s office said he “strongly condemned” the attack.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the apparent suicide bombing.
The attack comes on the first day of a cricket Test match in Rawalpindi — around 190 kilometres (120 miles) to the east — between Pakistan and Australia, who haven’t toured the country in nearly a quarter of a century because of security concerns.
Pakistan just started hosting international teams again after security concerns forced them to shift a lot of their high profile international hosting to the UAE.
