Pakistan forces end 20-hour standoff after Kohat mosque blast kills 21
Security forces ended a 20-hour standoff with militants after a suicide bombing and gun attack on a police compound in Kohat, Pakistan, killed 21 and wounded 103.
Pakistani security forces brought a 20-hour standoff to an end on Saturday at a police compound in northwestern Pakistan, after a suicide bomber and gunmen launched a coordinated assault that left 21 people dead and 103 wounded, officials said.
The attack began on Friday when an explosives-laden vehicle was rammed into a mosque inside the complex in Kohat, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province near the Afghan border, and gunmen stormed the facility. Many of those killed and injured were police officers and worshippers attending prayers.
Police official Mohammad Sadiq said the operation concluded after 20 hours. Security personnel were searching the compound and surrounding areas, and the bodies of eight attackers were recovered, according to local police. Sadiq said two attackers detonated explosives inside the compound on Saturday morning and that police had killed six assailants, not counting the bombers. It was not immediately clear whether the fresh explosions caused additional casualties or how many militants remained inside.
The complex houses the police's Special Branch intelligence agency, offices of the Counter Terrorism Department, and residences of counterterrorism officers who have conducted operations against militants across the province in recent years. The suicide attack brought down an outer wall of the police offices and badly damaged the mosque.
Witnesses being treated at the District Headquarters Hospital in Kohat described the moment of the blast. Assistant Sub-Inspector Umar Hayat said the prayer was scheduled for around 1:15 p.m. and the congregation had just reached the second rak'ah when a powerful explosion occurred. He said he lost consciousness as a wall collapsed on him and later found himself in the hospital. Police constable Khayal Zaman said the congregation had already started when the explosion took place as worshippers went into sajdah, causing the roof to collapse. He said those trapped remained under the rubble for a long time before being pulled out, and that the place had been extremely crowded.
Funeral prayers for the police officers killed in the assault were held late Friday at the police lines in Kohat, and the bodies of the officers and civilians killed were returned to their families for burial, Sadiq said.
No group immediately claimed responsibility, though suspicion was likely to fall on the Pakistani Taliban, formally known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, which has stepped up attacks on police and other security forces in recent years. The TTP is separate from but allied with Afghanistan's Taliban, which returned to power in 2021. Pakistan frequently accuses the Taliban government in Kabul of sheltering TTP leaders and allowing cross-border attacks, allegations Afghanistan's government denies.
President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif condemned the attack in separate statements and expressed sorrow over the deaths. Zardari said eliminating militants was essential to national security.
In 2023, a suicide bomber killed 101 people, most of them police officers, at a mosque inside a heavily fortified police compound in Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.