Militants attacked a Shiite mosque in northwest Pakistan on Friday, police said, with dozens of people wounded and fighting still ongoing. Television reports said at least 10 people were killed in the attack. The reports also said the militants were holding hostages.
The attack comes two weeks after a suicide bombing at a Shiite mosque in southern Pakistan killed 61 people, the deadliest sectarian incident to hit the country in nearly two years.
Senior police official Rana Umer Hayat told AFP several gunmen threw grenades before storming the Imamia mosque in Peshawar, the main city in Pakistan’s restive northwest.
TV footage showed people running away from the scene, some carrying injured on their shoulders, others limping, as police fired shots and checked people at a barrier.
Eyewitness Muhammad Raza told AFP: “There was a huge explosion, I can see many injured lying in front of me.” An AFP reporter at the scene said he had seen at least 40 wounded.
Pakistan has suffered a rising tide of sectarian violence in recent years, most of it perpetrated by hardline Sunni Muslim groups against minority Shiite Muslims, who make up around one in five of the population.
