Islamist leader, 3 others injured in mosque blast in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

Within weeks of a blast that killed a prominent cleric, a blast at a mosque in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on Friday injured an Islamist leader and three others.

Pakistani police said a blast rocked the Maulana Abdul Aziz Mosque in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s South Waziristan district during Friday prayers at around 1:45 pm.

Jamiat Ulema Islam’s (JUI) district chief Abdullah Nadeem and three others were injured in the blast, according to the police.

District Police Officer Asif Bahadar said that Nadeem was intended target of the attack and has suffered serious injuries, according to The Express Tribune.

On February 28, a blast had similarly struck a mosque at the Darul Uloom Haqqania seminary in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Nowshera. The blast killed six people, including the Maulana Hamidul Haq Haqqani , a cleric close to the Afghan Taliban and chief of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Sami (JUI-S). The police said that Haqqani was the target of the bombing that also injured at least 15 people.

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However, unlike in the blast at Nowshera where a suicide bomber was said to be involved, the police have said that the blast at South Waziristan involved an improvised explosive device (IED).

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District Police Spokesman Habib Islam told Dawn that no group has so far claimed responsibility for the attack so far.

Islam further said that Nadeem had been receiving death threats “for quite some time” and was attacked about seven or eight months ago as well.

In recent years, Pakistan has been rocked by violence with groups like Tehrik-e-Taliban (TTP) and Islamic State (Isis) conducting numerous attacks. Many of these attacks have targeted mosques where clerics and Islamists leaders along with military and police personnel have been targeted.

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In one of the deadliest attacks in recent years, a blast at a mosque in Peshawar on Jan. 30, 2023, killed 101 people, mostly police personnel, and injured 300-400 people.

The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province is prone to violence as it is home to an Islamist insurgency against the Pakistan state as well as infested by sectarian violence that often leads to death. As per the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), at least 346 people, including 22 civilians, had been killed in the province in terrorism-related incidents till Feb. 25.