Thirty-one people, according to latest reports, were killed and more than a hundred other wounded as a suicide attacker hit a mosque/imambargah – a Shiite worship place – on the outskirts of Islamabad on Friday, February 6. Death toll may increase as a large number of people have been injured in the attack.
The blast took place at a time when people in large number had thronged the mosque in Tarlai locality for the Friday prayers.
Police and rescue teams rushed the site as soon as the blast was reported. Emergency was declared in Islamabad hospitals. Seventy-seven injured were reportedly shifted to Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS), the city’s biggest hospital and over 50 others to Polyclinic, an other large government hospital.

Cause:

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack. In past, there have been bloody Shiite-Sunni rivalries in Pakistan but while terror acts still continue in different parts of the coutry, sectarian terrorism has almost come yo a standstill for many years.
The Friday attack came in the wake of the recent terrorist strikes by Baloch separatist group, Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) in multiple cities of the troubled Balochistan province. Pakistani security forces are also busy in operation against armed religious groups in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Of late, there was also a suicide attack at a Chinese restaurant in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, which Afghan Taliban blamed on the Daesh, ISISK; also claiming that the group had links in Pakistan.
Whatever the cause of the fresh attack, it is now for granted that Pakistan and Afghanistan have once again become a theater for a new Great Game – this time for critical rare earth metals and connectivity routes and hubs.