ISLAMABAD — A suicide bomber detonated explosives outside the gates of a district court in Islamabad on Tuesday, killing 12 people and wounding at least 27, Pakistan’s interior minister said. The blast, heard miles away, struck next to a police vehicle at a time when the area is usually crowded with court visitors.
No group immediately claimed responsibility. Authorities have faced a recent resurgence of attacks linked to the Pakistani Taliban, but Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi did not assign blame while telling reporters that investigators confirmed the blast was caused by a suicide attacker. Naqvi said the bomber tried to enter the court premises but, failing to do so, targeted a police car. Media reports say most of the casualties were passersby or people who had come for court appointments. Islamabad police said they were continuing their investigation.
Earlier, security forces said they foiled an attempt by militants to take cadets hostage at an army-run college overnight in Wana, a city in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province near the Afghan border. Authorities said a suicide car bomber and five other attackers targeted the facility. Officials blamed the Pakistani Taliban for that assault, though the group denied involvement.
Local police chief Alamgir Mahsud said troops quickly killed two militants, while three managed to enter the compound and were later cornered in an administrative block. Army commandos joined security forces in a clearance operation; intermittent gunfire continued into Tuesday. The administrative block is separate from the buildings housing hundreds of cadets and staff.
The Pakistani Taliban, or TTP, has been emboldened since the Taliban took power in Kabul in 2021, and many TTP leaders and fighters are believed to have taken refuge in Afghanistan. Pakistan has seen a rise in militant attacks in recent years; the deadliest was the 2014 assault on an army-run school in Peshawar, where Taliban gunmen killed 154 people, mostly children. The military has said attackers in recent incidents sought to replicate that scale of violence.
Tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan have also risen. Kabul accused Islamabad of drone strikes on Oct. 9 that killed several people in the Afghan capital and pledged retaliation; cross-border fighting 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 aimed at easing tensions ended without agreement after Afghan officials refused to give written assurances that the TTP and other militant groups would not use Afghan territory to target Pakistan. An earlier, brief 2022 cease-fire between Pakistan and the TTP also collapsed amid mutual accusations of violations.
