A bombing in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad on Tuesday killed 12 people and injured more than 20 – marking the worst suicide attack to rock the city in nearly two decades.
Wreaths of gray smoke and orange flames curled over a car in the capital, in a video of the aftermath.
Jamaat-ul-Ahrar (JuA), a faction of the militant Pakistani Taliban (TTP), claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement seen by CNN. The JuA has been behind some of the deadliest terrorist attacks in Pakistan in the past decade. However, the TTP distanced itself from the attack, according to the group’s spokesman Mohammad Khurasani.
The country’s president Asif Ali Zardari “strongly condemned the suicide blast” near the city’s High Court on Tuesday afternoon.
Islamabad requires a high level of security to enter and exit the city with specific security zones throughout the capital. The explosion took place in the parking lot of the city’s busy judicial complex in a district full of high-ranking government offices.
Authorities located CCTV footage showing a man loitering around the courts having attempted to enter the building – before carrying out the attack, according to Mohsin Naqvi, the Pakistani interior minister.
“He was waiting, but when the police car approached that’s when he carried out the attack,” Naqvi told reporters on Tuesday. “Everyone who enters the court is checked by security and since he was unable to do so, he attacked the police car. We have all the CCTV footage.”
It was the deadliest suicide attack in the Pakistani capital in close to two decades. The last major attack was in 2008 when a suicide attack by a militant Islamist group at the city’s Marriott hotel killed 54 people.
Pakistan has faced a surge in Islamist violence since the Afghan Taliban swept Kabul in 2021. Islamabad has long accused Kabul of harboring the TTP.
Without providing evidence, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif foisted blame upon “Indian terrorist proxies” on Tuesday, claiming that other recent militant attacks in the country were “being carried out from Afghan soil and backed by India.”
Delhi rejected “the baseless and unfounded allegations” in a statement on Tuesday, accusing Islamabad of fomenting “desperate diversionary ploys.”
“It is a predictable tactic by Pakistan to concoct false narratives against India in order to deflect the attention of its own public from the ongoing military-inspired constitutional subversion and power-grab unfolding within the country,” added India’s foreign ministry.
The comments come months after India and Pakistan engaged in the most intense fighting in decades, which saw four days of escalating conflict in May that included fighter jets, missiles, and drones packed with explosives.
‘I saw 40 people fall immediately’
Manzar Abbas lay on a red and white hospital bed in Islamabad on Tuesday, his bloodied leg strapped with a thick bandage.
The 32-year-old PhD student was near a police station close to the courts, when tens of residents immediately hit the ground following the blast. Then, in a split second, a security guard helped him get to hospital.
“When I was passing the police station close to the courts, I saw the police car pass me and I saw a man go towards it wearing his jacket,” Abbas told CNN.
“I saw about 40 people fall immediately,” he added. “I had been hit as well and bled a lot. But thank goodness I was saved.”
Forensic experts examine a car after a suicide blast outside the district court in Islamabad on Tuesday. – Farooq Naeem/AFP/Getty Images
Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Asif stated on X that Pakistan is in a “state of war” and that this attack should be taken as a “wake-up call” with regards to negotiations with neighboring Afghanistan.
“The rulers of Kabul can stop terrorism in Pakistan, but bringing this war all the way to Islamabad is a message from Kabul, to which—praise be to God—Pakistan has the full strength to respond,” the Pakistani defense minister added.
The Afghan Taliban’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs released a statement expressing “deep sorrow and condemnation” regarding both the attack in Islamabad as well as the attack on the cadet college in the country’s northwest. The statement from Afghanistan did not address the remarks of Pakistan’s defence minister.
Both the embassies of China and the United States condemned the attack. The US Chargé d’Affaires Natalie Baker said in a statement that “the United States stands in solidarity with Pakistan in the struggle against terrorism.” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres extended his condolences to the victims’ families and called for a full investigation, his spokesman said.
Clashes between the Pakistani and Afghan militaries in October saw the worst violence between the two countries in years.
An attempt to maintain a ceasefire fell apart when peace talks between the two neighbors failed in Istanbul last week following the failure to establish a long-term deal regarding hostile militant groups in Afghanistan that operate against Pakistan.
The explosion came less than a day after militants attacked a cadet college in northwestern Pakistan.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
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