More than 40 people are reported to have been killed after a suicide bomb ripped through a rally in Pakistan.
The attack, which also left more than 200 people wounded including children, was aimed at supporters of a hard-line cleric and political leader in the country’s northwestern Bajur district that borders Afghanistan.
The police said the explosion was a suicide bombing with at least 44 dead.
Senior police officer Nazir Khan said the workers convention of Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s Jamiat Ulema Islam party was taking place on the outskirts of Khar, the capital of Bajur district, when the explosion took place.
Adam Khan, 45, was hit by splinters in his leg and both hands. He said it was around 4 p.m. when the the explosion knocked him to the ground. “There was all dust and smoke around and I was under the some injured people from where I hardly (could stand) up but only to see chaos and some scattered limbs,” he said.
Rehman said: “Many of our fellows lost lives and many more wounded in this incident. I will ask the federal and provincial administrations to fully investigate this incident and provide due compensation and medical facilities to the affected ones.”
Mohammad Wali said he was listening to a speaker address the crowd when the huge explosion temporarily deafened him.
“I was near the water dispenser to fetch a glass of water when the bomb exploded throwing me away to the ground,” he said.
“We came to the meeting with enthusiasm but ended up at the hospital seeing crying wounded people and sobbing relatives taking bodies of their loved ones.”
Initially police said 10 people were killed but the latest figures could still climb higher with many of the wounded critically injured.
Azam Khan, head of the emergency room at Khar’s main hospital, said 35 bodies were brought to the hospital and some were taken back by relatives while the number of wounded was now more than 100.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack but the Islamic State group operates across the border in Afghanistan.
Pakistan has seen a resurgence of attacks by Islamist militants since last year when a ceasefire between the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Islamabad broke down.
However, most of the recent attacks have been on security forces and installations, rather than political gatherings.
The TTP pledges allegiance to, but is not directly a part of, the Taliban in western neighbour Afghanistan. Pakistan’s security forces say the TTP have sanctuaries in Afghanistan, which the Taliban run-administration there denies.
In a statement sent to The Associated Press, the TTP condemned the bombing, saying it was aimed at pitching Islamists against each other.
Zabiullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Afghan Taliban, also condemned the bombing.
“Such crimes cannot be justified in any way,” he said in a message on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
The TTP are not the only militant group to carry out attacks in the area, which has also been hit by a local chapter of the Islamic State.
Maulana Ziaullah, the local chief of Rehman’s party, was among the dead. Senator Abdur Rasheed and former lawmaker Maulana Jamaluddin was also on the stage but escaped unhurt. Party officials said Rehman was not in the rally.
Rehman is considered to be a pro-Taliban cleric and his political party is part of the coalition government in Islamabad.
Meetings are being organized across the country to mobilize supporters for the coming elections.
The bombing was one of the four worst attacks in the northwest since 2014, when 147 people, mostly schoolchildren, were killed in a Taliban attack on an army-run school in Peshawar.
In January, 74 people were killed in a bombing at a mosque in Peshawar.
In February, more than 100 people, mostly policemen, died in a bombing at a mosque inside a high-security compound housing Peshawar police headquarters.
