A curfew remained enforced in Anbar and Pandyali tehsils, as relatives laid to rest their near and dear ones in various parts of the tribal region.
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The explosion took place in Payee Khan, a village in Mohmand Agency, which is reported to be one of the seven semi-autonomous districts in Pakistan along the Afghanistan border.
A portion of the mosque and its verandah collapsed under the impact of the blast. He said rescuers had transported the dead and wounded to nearby hospitals, where some of the wounded were listed in critical condition.
“Many people were gathered inside the mosque when a suicide bomber blew himself up”, an eyewitness said. The group confirmed their role in today’s bombing, citing a 2009 incident in the same village in which local anti-Taliban fighters killed 13 of their members.
The place where the attack took place, there the army has been fighting against Taliban militants.
The attack came a day after a woman was killed in the same area, the Mohmand district, after militants threw grenades and opened fire at the house of a pro-government tribal elder, officials said.
However, Tehrik-i-Taliban militants, to which Pakistanis knows as “Pakistani Taliban” are waging an Islamist insurgency in the area and have launched a series of bombing attacks and assaults on security services.
‘The area is remote and so far I have received only this information from our sources via wireless, ‘ he said.
“The cowardly attacks by terrorists can not shatter the government’s resolve to eliminate terrorism from the country”, he said.
Later, the governor went to the Agency Headquarters Hospital in Khar in Bajaur Agency to enquire after the health of the injured.
Pakistani Taliban routinely targets courts, schools and mosques in the tribal region, where the military has launched a massive operation to flush out the terrorists since 2014.
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Those worries increased after the official Islamic State news service claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing at a hospital in the Pakistani city of Quetta that killed 74 people.
