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A rare explosion in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad on Tuesday killed 12 people and injured 20 others, the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences Hospital told reporters.
A Pakistani security official told CNN that the explosion near the city’s High Court early Tuesday afternoon was being investigated as a suicide bombing.
The country’s President Asif Ali Zardari issued a statement condemning what he called a “suicide bombing” near the city’s High Court.
Islamabad has set up specific security zones across the capital, requiring a high level of security when entering and exiting the city. The explosion took place in the parking lot of a crowded judicial complex in an area of high-level government offices.
No one has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, but security sources in a statement to CNN blamed the Afghan Taliban and Indian-linked militants.
Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Asif said on the X program that Pakistan was in a “state of war” and that the attack should be taken as a “wake-up call” regarding negotiations with neighboring Afghanistan.
Pakistan has faced a surge in Islamist violence since the Afghan Taliban swept Kabul in 2021. Islamabad has long accused the Pakistani Taliban (known as TTP) of harboring in Kabul, a charge denied by its Afghan namesake.
Clashes between Pakistani and Afghan forces in October resulted in the worst violence between the two countries in years.
Attempts to maintain a ceasefire collapsed when peace talks between the two neighbors failed in Istanbul last week after failing to establish a long-term agreement over hostile armed groups operating against Pakistan in Afghanistan.
Asif said the attack was “a message from Kabul all the way to Islamabad, to which – praise be to God – Pakistan will respond with all its might.”
The attack came less than a day after militants attacked a cadet college in northwestern Pakistan.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
