ISLAMABAD — A suicide bomber detonated explosives outside the gates of a district courthouse on Tuesday, killing 12 people and wounding at least 27, Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi said. The explosion, heard for miles, occurred beside a police vehicle during a period when the court area is usually busy with visitors.
No group immediately claimed responsibility. Investigators determined the blast was caused by a suicide attacker, Naqvi told reporters, and said the bomber had tried to get inside the court compound but, failing to do so, blew up next to the police car. Media accounts indicated most of the victims were passersby or people who had come for court appointments. Islamabad police said the probe is ongoing.
Separately, security forces said they thwarted an overnight militant attempt to take cadets hostage at an army-run college in Wana, a city in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa near the Afghan border. Officials said a suicide car bomber and five other attackers stormed the facility. Government sources attributed the assault to the Pakistani Taliban, though the group denied involvement.
Local police chief Alamgir Mahsud said troops quickly killed two militants, while three attackers managed to enter the compound and were later cornered in an administrative block. Army commandos joined security forces in a clearance operation, and intermittent gunfire continued into Tuesday. Authorities said the administrative block is separate from the buildings that house hundreds of cadets and staff.
The Pakistani Taliban (TTP) have grown bolder since the Taliban took power in Kabul in 2021; many TTP leaders and fighters are believed to have sought refuge in Afghanistan. Pakistan has seen a rise in militant attacks in recent years, including the deadliest incident in 2014 when Taliban gunmen killed 154 people, mostly children, in an assault on an army-run school in Peshawar. The military says some recent attackers aimed to reproduce that level of carnage.
Tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan have also increased. Kabul accused Islamabad of carrying out drone strikes on Oct. 9 that killed several people in the Afghan capital and vowed retaliation; cross-border clashes that followed killed dozens before a Qatar-brokered cease-fire took effect on Oct. 19 and has so far held. Two rounds of talks in Istanbul meant to ease tensions ended without agreement after Afghan officials declined to give written assurances that the TTP and other militant groups would not use Afghan territory to strike Pakistan. A brief 2022 cease-fire between Pakistan and the TTP also collapsed amid mutual accusations of violations.