Peshawar // Heavily armed militants stormed a Shiite mosque in Pakistan on Friday, killing at least 20 people in an attack claimed by the Taliban.
The group said it was retaliation for the execution of one of their comrades.
Three militants with grenades, Kalashnikovs and explosive suicide vests struck at the Imamia mosque in Peshawar – the main city in Pakistan’s north-west region – about the time of main Friday prayers.
The attack came two weeks after a suicide bombing at a Shiite mosque in southern Pakistan killed 61 people, the deadliest sectarian incident to hit the country in nearly two years.
Nasir Durrani, the police chief of northwestern Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province of which Peshawar is the capital, said that at least 20 people were killed and 45 others were wounded.
Mr Durrani said that three militants were also killed in the attack.
The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan claimed responsibility for the attack in an email statement, saying it was revenge for the killing of a militant known as Doctor Usman, who was hanged in December.
“This is a series of taking blood for blood, which will continue. The government should expect more and even harder responses,” the statement said.
Police said the attack began when the militants approached from a nearby building site, cutting barbed wire to get into the mosque compound.
“One suicide bomber exploded himself in the veranda of the mosque while another was shot dead by police inside the main hall,” said Mr Durrani.
“The third was caught by people, but was later also killed.”
Some worshippers who fled the mosque reported that at least some of the attackers were wearing security uniforms.
Eyewitness Mohammad Khalil said a “huge explosion” shook the main hall of the mosque as prayers were coming to an end, and that the gunmen then started firing on worshippers.
“This is very shameful and very sorrowful that people came to the mosque for worship and lost their lives instead,” said Maulana Nazir Hussain, who said his son and a nephew were killed.
Meanwhile, the mosque’s imam called on God to help protect his worshippers.
TV footage in the aftermath showed people running from the scene, some carrying the injured on their shoulders, others limping, as police fired shots and checked people at a barrier.
The mosque is close to several government buildings including the offices of the Federal Investigation Agency and passport agency.
Since June last year the army has been waging a major campaign against strongholds of TTP and other militants in the North Waziristan tribal area, which lies close to Peshawar.
The military has heralded the success of the operation, which it says has killed more than 2,000 militants, though the precise number and identity of those killed cannot be verified independently.
The country has stepped up its fight against militants since Taliban gunmen massacred more than 150 people, most of them children, at a school in Peshawar in December.
On Thursday the military said it had taken 12 Taliban members into custody over the school attack, including the imam of a mosque.
Following the massacre, prime minister Nawaz Sharif ended a six-year moratorium on the death penalty and Doctor Usman, also known as Aqil, was one of the first to be taken to the gallows.
Usman was convicted for an attack on the army’s headquarters in Rawalpindi in 2009. He was arrested after becoming injured.
Sectarian violence has been on the rise in Pakistan in recent years, most of it perpetrated by hardline Sunni Muslim groups against minority Shiite Muslims, who make up around a fifth of the population.
The suicide bombing at a mosque in southern Sindh province on January 30 was the deadliest sectarian attack in Pakistan since February 2013, when 89 were killed in a market bombing in the southwestern city of Quetta.
Anti-Shiite attacks have been increasing in recent years in Karachi, Quetta, the northwestern area of Parachinar and the far-northeastern town of Gilgit.
* Agence France-Presse with additional reporting by Associated Press
