A rare explosion in Pakistan’s capital city of Islamabad on Tuesday has left 12 dead and 20 injured, the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences Hospital told reporters.
A security source in Pakistan told CNN that the explosion near the city’s High Court early on Tuesday afternoon is being investigated as a suicide attack.
The country’s president Asif Ali Zardari released a statement condemning what he called a “suicide blast” near the city’s High Court.
Islamabad requires a high level of security to enter and exit the city with specific security zones throughout the capital. 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 CNN has claimed it was carried out by militants associated with the Afghan Taliban and India.
Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Asif 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. Islamabad 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 Istanbul last week following the failure to establish a long-term deal regarding hostile militant groups in Afghanistan that operate against Pakistan.
Asif had stated that this attack “all the way to Islamabad 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.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
