ISLAMABAD — A suicide bomber blew himself up among the worshippers gathered at an Islamic school for Friday prayers in Pakistan, killing at least five people and wounding several others, police and rescue workers said.
The bombing occurred at the Islamic school where several top leaders of the Afghan Taliban including the group’s founding father Mullah Omar studied.
The head of the school, Maulana Hamidul Haq, thought to be close to the Afghan Taliban, was among the dead, regional administration chief Irfan Mehsud said.
The bombing occurred inside the compound of the mosque when people were lined up for prayers in the afternoon, local police officer Amjad Mohamed told dpa.
Rescue workers have retrieved at least 20 injured people from the prayer hall.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but the extremist Islamic State has been targeting in Pakistan people thought close to the Afghan Taliban.
An emergency was declared at the local hospitals in anticipation that the number of dead and wounded might rise, a spokesman for the regional health ministry said.
The founding father of the school and the teacher of several Afghan Taliban leaders, Maulana Samiul Haq, was murdered in 2018.
