SOUTH WAZIRISTAN: Four people, including the district chief of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (Fazl), were injured in an explosion inside a mosque in Lower South Waziristan district on Friday.

This was a second attack that apparently targeted JUI-F leader Maulana Abdullah Wazir. He had narrowly escaped a remote-controlled bomb blast on the Wana-Azam Warsak Road near Kalosha.

The explosive material was placed under the pulpit in the prayer hall of the mosque in the Azam Warsak bazaar area of Birmal tehsil and the blast took place during Friday sermon, according to District Police Officer (DPO) Asif Bahader.

The DPO said Maulana Abdullah was inside the mosque at the time of blast, which left him along with three other men Rahmanullah, Moula Noor and Shah Behram injured. All the victims were shifted to the District Headquarters Hospital, Wana.

The JUI-F leader was later referred from D.I. Khan to a hospital in Multan.

A special investigation team was formed to collect evidence from the blast site.

District police spokesman Habib Islam said that no group has claimed responsibility for the attack so far, Dawn.com reported. “Maulana Abdullah had been receiving death threats for quite some time,” he said. “He was also attacked about seven or eight months ago.”

JUI-F chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman condemned the mosque blast, saying its sanctity had been violated in the holy month of Ramazan.

“The blast is tragic and condemnable,” he said in a statement.

He urged the government and institutions to brief the nation on the situation in Balochistan and KP, adding that lawlessness and other key issues in both provinces were being ignored in parliament.

Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi condemned the blast in a statement from his office, stating that the incident “violated” the sanctity of the mosque.

“The sanctity of the mosque was violated during the holy month of Ramazan,” Naqvi was quoted as saying. “The blast … is a cowardly act of the enemy.”

The interior minister said that the “beasts” who carried out the attack deserve no concessions and prayed for the speedy recovery of Maulana Abdullah and the other injured.

Last month, six people, including JUI-S leader Maulana Hamidul Haq Haqqani, were killed and 15 injured when a suicide blast ripped through the Darul Uloom Haqqania seminary in KP’s Nowshera district.

Published in Dawn, March 15th, 2025