The Pakistani Taliban has claimed responsibility for a Friday attack on a Shiite Muslim mosque in Peshawar in northern Pakistan — a suicide bombing and gunfire assault that a hospital representative said killed 19 people and injured dozens of others.
Besides the 19 killed, 67 people were injured in the attack, said Tauheed Zulfiqar, a representative of the Hayatabad Medical Complex in Peshawar.
The Pakistani Taliban carried out the attack, spokesman Muhammad Khurasan said in an e-mail to CNN, as revenge for Pakistan’s December 19 execution of a man.
Up to five attackers executed the assault, including a suicide bomber and someone who was shooting in the mosque, Nasir Khan Durrani, the city’s police inspector general, told reporters. One would-be suicide bomber was stopped by people in the mosque who held him by the throat, Durrani said.