The death toll has risen to 88 from a suicide attack targeting a packed shrine in the southern Pakistani city of Sehwan, a health official told CNN on Friday.
The number of people injured in Thursday’s attack on Lal Shahbaz Qalandar shrine has climbed to 200, said Fazal Pechuho, health secretary for Pakistan’s Sindh province.
A local hospital official earlier told CNN that 24 of the dead were children ages 4 to 8. Another 16 of the victims were women, Dr. Zahid Hussain said.
In response, Pakistan’s military has shut down the border with Afghanistan and launched a crackdown on what it said were terrorists with cross-border links.
Thousands of worshipers, including families with children, had gathered Thursday at the more than 800-year-old shrine for the Sufi ritual of Dhamal, which involves music, chanting and prayer.
The Islamic State Khorasan, ISIS’ affiliate in Afghanistan and Pakistan, claimed responsibility for the attack in a phone call to CNN.
Prime Minister calls attack ‘brutal’
In the blast’s aftermath, the dead and injured overwhelmed the 100-bed Sehwan Hospital, Hussain told CNN.
Many patients were later transferred to bigger hospitals in other cities of Sindh province, he said.
The Amaq news agency, which is affiliated with ISIS, reported a suicide bomber in an explosives vest carried out the attack.
Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif called the attack “brutal.”
“I have directed all the state institutions to mobilize all resources for rescue and relief after this brutal terror attack on Lal Shahbaz Qalandar’s shrine,” Sharif said in a statement.
Since Thursday night, the Pakistani military said it had killed more than 100 terrorists and arrested many others throughout country.
Additionally, the Afghan government was asked to turn over more than 75 people that Pakistan said planned, directed and supported terrorism across the border, the military said.
The military said Friday that the capital of Islamabad and its twin city of Rawalpindi had been put on high alert following “a recent upsurge in terrorist incidents in the country.” As a result, schools in Islamabad and Rawalpindi closed early.
Search operations in the Rawalpindi area have been stepped up, according to Inter-Services Public Relations, or ISPR, the media wing of the Pakistan armed forces. Senior law enforcement agency officials also met Friday to assess the security situation and ways to respond to the terror threat.
“Security forces and intelligence outfits have been instructed to further intensify combing and targeted operations with the aim to eliminate terrorists and sleeper cells,” an ISPR statement said.
Border closure
In a series of tweets, Pakistani military spokesman Maj. Gen. Asif Ghafoor blamed operatives from Afghanistan for a recent spate of attacks and urged his country to remain calm.
The office of the Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said on Twitter that he “condemns (the) terrorist attack in Pakistan and terms ISIS a common enemy of Afghanistan & Pakistan.”
Sediq Sediqqi, spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Interior Affairs, tweeted that the Islamic State Khorasan poses an “enormous threat” to both the Afghan and Pakistani people and called for the two countries to work together to eliminate the extremist group.
The Sehwan attack comes three days after a bomb exploded during a protest in Lahore, killing at least 14 people and injuring 59 more, according to government spokesman Malik Ahmad Khan.
Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a splinter group of Pakistan’s Tehreek-i Taliban — also known as the Pakistani Taliban — claimed responsibility for Monday’s attack in a statement emailed to CNN.
