Islamabad (Reuters) – At least 16 people, including five police officers, were killed in northwest Pakistan on Friday (18), after a suicide bomber drove a car laden with explosives into a police station as people prayed inside a mosque within the building, police said.
The incident occurred in the city of Kohat, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, when the vehicle collided with an outer wall of the police station and armed men accompanying it opened fire, the provincial police chief Zulfikar Hameed said.
It was a suicide attack, he added. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
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The explosion happened near a mosque where police officers, their families and other civilians were performing Friday prayers, according to a police statement.
A shooting was still ongoing between police and the attackers, and one of them, wearing an explosives-laden vest, was killed, the statement said.
The Interior Ministry said that the attackers’ “cowardly” actions could not weaken the nation’s “firm resolve.”
Militancy along Pakistan’s border areas has risen sharply in recent months, targeting mainly the armed forces and the police.
Islamabad says militants use safe havens in Afghanistan to train and plot attacks in Pakistan. The Taliban government’s in Afghanistan denied the accusation and said militancy is an internal problem of Pakistan.
