Local Pakistani officials say at least 31 people were killed and more than 100 others wounded after a suicide bombing and gunfire attack by armed assailants on a mosque in Kohat city in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. According to police, at least 16 of the victims were police personnel.<\/p>\n
According to reports, the attack took place at midday on Friday during the congregational prayer. The attackers drove a vehicle packed with explosives towards the mosque inside the old Police Lines compound in Kohat, after which gunfire was also reported.<\/p>\n
The explosion caused severe damage to the mosque building. In addition to the mosque, the compound houses the city’s police headquarters as well as important sections such as the counterterrorism department and the special branch.<\/p>\n
The Hafiz Gul Bahadur group has claimed responsibility for the attack. At the same time, Pakistani officials have again stressed that they will continue their decisive fight against terrorist groups.<\/p>\n
The Taliban administration’s Foreign Ministry also condemned the attack in a statement on Saturday, 28 September. However, the ministry stopped short of describing the incident as a terrorist attack, calling it an “unjustifiable and condemnable act.”<\/p>\n
The incident comes as Islamabad has repeatedly blamed an increase in attacks in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan on militants it says are organised from Afghan territory, an allegation the Taliban administration rejects. Kohat is one of the cities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in northwestern Pakistan, a province that has repeatedly seen attacks on security forces and places of worship in recent years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At least 31 people were killed in a suicide bombing and shooting at a mosque in Pakistan’s Kohat city, officials said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22087,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-important-news","category-security-incidents"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22088\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}