PESHAWAR, Pakistan —
The death toll from a suicide bombing in northwestern Pakistan rose to 88 on Tuesday. The attack, on a Sunni mosque inside a major police facility, was one of the deadliest targeting Pakistani security forces in recent years.
More than 300 worshipers were praying in the mosque in the city of Peshawar, with more devotees approaching, when the bomber set off his explosives vest Monday morning, officials said. The blast ripped through the mosque, killing and injuring scores, and blowing off part of the roof.
What was left of the roof then caved in, injuring many more, according to Zafar Khan, a police officer. Rescuers had to remove mounds of debris to reach worshipers still trapped under the rubble.
More bodies were retrieved overnight and early Tuesday, according to Mohammad Asim, a government hospital spokesman in Peshawar, and several of those critically injured died. “Most of them were policemen,” Asim said of the victims. The bombing also wounded more than 150 people.
Bilal Faizi, the chief rescue official, said rescue teams were still working Tuesday at the site as more people were believed to be trapped inside. Mourners buried victims at graveyards in the city and elsewhere.
It was not clear how the bomber was able to reach the mosque, which is in a walled compound in a high-security zone with other government buildings.
The investigation will show “how the terrorist entered the mosque,” said Ghulam Ali, the provincial governor in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, of which Peshawar is the capital.
“Yes, it was a security lapse,” he added.
Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif visited a hospital in Peshawar after the bombing and vowed “stern action” against those behind the attack.
“The sheer scale of the human tragedy is unimaginable. This is no less than an attack on Pakistan,” he tweeted.
But hours later, TTP spokesperson Mohammad Khurasani distanced the group from the bombing, saying it was not its policy to target mosques, seminaries and religious places, adding that those taking part in such acts could face punitive action under TTP’s policy. His statement did not address why a TTP commander had claimed responsibility for the bombing.
Pakistan, which is mostly Sunni Muslim, has seen a surge in militant attacks since November, when the Pakistani Taliban ended a cease-fire with government forces, as the country was contending with unprecedented floods that killed 1,739 people, destroyed more than 2 million homes and at one point submerged as much as one-third of the country.
The Pakistani Taliban is the dominant militant group in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, and Peshawar has been the scene of frequent attacks. But the Islamic State in Khorasan Province, a regional affiliate of Islamic State and a rival of the Taliban, has also been behind deadly attacks in Pakistan in recent years.
In 2014, a Pakistani Taliban faction attacked an army-run school in Peshawar and killed 154 people, most of them schoolchildren.