By Aamir Latif
KARACHI, (AA): 13 people, including four policemen were injured when a suicide bomber detonated his explosive-laden vest after security forces foiled an attempt to strike an Eid al-Adha congregation in southern Pakistan on Tuesday, police said.One suicide bomber was killed and one injured.
Two bombers, according to police, tried to enter a Shia mosque where over 500 people had gathered for Eid prayers in the Shikarpur district in the Sindh province, 500 kilometers north of Karachi.
“The bombers were intercepted by the police deputed for the security [of the mosque] propelling one to detonate his explosive-laden vest, while his accomplice was successfully tackled by police and citizens before he could blow himself up,” A.D Khawaja, police chief of the Sindh province told reporters.
Three policemen were critically injured in the botched attack, he said.
A breakaway faction of the proscribed militant organisation Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility for the Tuesday’s attack. “We had planned the attack,” the group’s spokesperson Ihsanullah Ihsan said
This was the second attack on a Shia mosque in Shikarpur in less than two years.
In January 2015, an explosion at a Shia mosque in Shikarpur had killed 61 people and injured over 60 others. Jundullah, a splinter group of Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan, had claimed responsibility for the attack.
[Photo: Scene of he suicide attack near the mosque. Photo by The News International]