ISLAMABAD: A worshipper at the imambargah in Islamabad where dozens of people were martyred in a suicide blast on Friday described an “extremely powerful” explosion ripping through the building just after prayer started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Muhammad Kazim, 52, told AFP<\/em> he arrived at the Imambargah Qasr-e-Khadijatul Kubra shortly after 1:00pm (0800 GMT) on Friday and took up a place around seven or eight rows from the Imam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “During the first bow of the Namaz (prayer ritual), we heard gunfire,” he told AFP<\/em> outside the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) hospital, where many of the wounded were brought for treatment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “And while we were still in the bowing position, an explosion occurred,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kazim \u2014 from Gilgit Baltistan who currently lives in Islamabad \u2014 escaped unharmed, but accompanied his wounded friend to the Pims hospital for treatment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “It was unclear whether it was a suicide bombing, but the explosion was extremely powerful and caused numerous casualties,” Kazim said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Debris fell from the roof, and windows were shattered,” he added. “When I got outside, many bodies were scattered… Many people lost their lives.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another worshipper, Imran Mahmood, described a gunfight between the suicide bomber, a possible accomplice and volunteer security personnel at the imambargah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The suicide attacker was trying to move forward, but one of our injured volunteers fired at him from behind, hitting him in the thigh,” Mahmood, in his fifties, told AFP<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “He fell but got up again. Another man accompanying him opened fire on our volunteers,” he said, adding the attacker “then jumped onto the gate and detonated the explosives”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By nightfall on Friday, the death toll stood at 31, with 169 more wounded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The attack was the deadliest in the capital since September 2008, when 60 people were killed in a suicide truck bomb blast that destroyed part of the five-star Marriott hotel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ISLAMABAD: A worshipper at the imambargah in Islamabad where dozens of people were martyred in a suicide blast on Friday described an “extremely powerful” explosion ripping through the building just after prayer started. Muhammad Kazim, 52, told AFP he arrived at the Imambargah Qasr-e-Khadijatul Kubra shortly after 1:00pm (0800 GMT) on Friday and took up a place […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19579,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","inline_featured_image":false,"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"no","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_3859443944190656_798604363342440":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[{"account":"facebook_3859443944190656_798604363342440","service":"facebook","timestamp":1770403485,"status":"success"}],"rop_publish_now_status":"done","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pakistan"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19578"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19578\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19580,"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19578\/revisions\/19580"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}