A rare explosion in Pakistan’s capital city on Tuesday has left 12 d3ad and 20 !njured, a major hospital told reporters.
A security source in Pakistan told Reuters that the explosion near the city’s High Court early on Tuesday afternoon, November 11 is being investigated as a suicide attack.
The country’s president released a statement condemning what he called a “suicide blast” near the city’s High Court.
The capital requires a high level of security to enter and exit the city with specific security zones throughout. The explosion took place in the parking lot of the city’s busy judicial complex in a district full of high-ranking government offices.
There has been no claim of responsibility for the attack yet, but a statement released by a security source to a news agency has claimed it was carried out by militants associated with the Afghan Taliban and India.
Pakistan’s Defense Minister stated on X that Pakistan is in a “state of war” and that this attack should be taken as a “wake-up call” with regards to negotiations with neighboring Afghanistan.
Pakistan has faced a surge in Islamist violence since the Afghan Taliban swept Kabul in 2021. The capital has long accused Kabul of harboring the Pakistani Taliban militant group (known as the TTP), which its Afghan namesake denies.
Clashes between the Pakistani and Afghan militaries in October saw the worst violence between the two countries in years.
An attempt to maintain a ceasefire fell apart when peace talks between the two neighbors failed in a major Turkish city last week following the failure to establish a long-term deal regarding hostile militant groups in Afghanistan that operate against Pakistan.
The minister had stated that this attack “all the way to the capital is a message from Kabul, to which — praise be to God — Pakistan has the full strength to respond.”
The attack comes less than a day after a cadet college was attacked by militants in northwestern Pakistan.
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