A suicide bombing attack outside a court in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad has killed 12 people and injured at least 27 more, and by all reports the carnage could have been worse as the attacker was unable to get inside a district courthouse, the intended target.
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has said he “strongly condemned the suicide blast.” And Sindh province’s Home Minister Ziaul Hassan Lanjar said in a statement, “Suicide bombers and terrorists have no religion. They are enemies of humanity.”
“As I entered the court building, a huge blast occurred. I thought the entire judiciary building would collapse on me,” a court lawyer and eyewitness, Zahid Khan, told CBS News. “When I went upstairs, I saw people lying on the ground around the fire … Just three minutes earlier, I had been at that exact spot while parking my bike.”
“I saw many people lying injured, with blood on the road,” he said. Smoke had still been visible rising over the area in the wake of the blast.
Importantly Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has quickly laid blame on India, despite suicide bombings not being typical of operations out of India:
Sharif has blamed India for the “suicide attack” in Islamabad as well as the attack on a cadet college that took place near the border with Afghanistan earlier today.
Without providing any evidence to back up his statement, Sharif said: “Both attacks are the worst examples of Indian state terrorism in the region.”
“It is time for the world to condemn such nefarious conspiracies of India,” he continued in an official government account post on X. “We will continue the war against them until the complete elimination of the scourge of terrorism.”
Casting stones at India is typical of rival nuclear-armed power Pakistan, as the neighboring countries have long been bitter enemies, but the past week has seen the Pakistani Taliban, or TTP, as well as some representatives within the Afghan Taliban issue repeat threats against Pakistani cities.
Pakistan’s Minister of Defense Khawaja Asif did narrow his blame on Afghan and border terrorism. “Kabul’s rulers can stop terrorism in Pakistan, but today’s suicide attack at the Islamabad district courts proves this is a nationwide war,” Asif said in a statement Tuesday.
Explosion outside Islamabad court in Pakistan kills at least 12
‘We are probing what kind of blast it was. It is not clear yet,’ a police spokesperson said pic.twitter.com/JmNCyTZthj
— RT (@RT_com) November 11, 2025
“Anyone who believes the Pakistan Army is only fighting on the Afghan-Pakistan border and in remote Balochistan should take this attack as a wake-up call. This is a war for all of Pakistan,” he added.
The timing of this attack is interesting related to India, however, as just the day prior a large car blast targeted Red Fort, which is a highly populated tourist destination. It killed eight and wounded many more, after which India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi vowed that the “conspirators” behind the blast “will not be spared,” and that “all those responsible will be brought to justice.”
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