PESHAWAR: At least 16 people, including five police officers, were killed in explosions at a police complex in northwestern Pakistan on Friday, where security forces were battling armed attackers, provincial police said.

The attack began during Friday prayers with an explosion near a mosque inside Kohat’s Old Police Lines compound, which houses police and counterterrorism offices. Police initially said an explosives-laden vehicle may have rammed the complex but that the precise cause was still being investigated.

A suicide bomber subsequently detonated explosives near the Special Branch building inside the compound, according to a later police update. Officers from the police and Counter Terrorism Department were continuing to exchange fire with other attackers, one of whom police described as a sniper and said had been killed.

No group immediately claimed the attack and police did not identify a specific group as being responsible.

“According to information received, five police personnel and 11 civilians were martyred in the explosion,” Khyber Pakhtunkhwa police said in its latest update.

Rescue 1122 spokesperson Bilal Faizi said more than 30 wounded people had been transported to hospitals, where authorities declared an emergency. Search-and-rescue teams were working through the damaged mosque and surrounding buildings.

Footage shared on social media showed extensive damage to the mosque, with part of its roof and walls collapsed. Other videos showed residents helping injured people reach ambulances.

Provincial police chief Zulfiqar Hameed said the security operation would continue until all the attackers had been eliminated.

The assault came one day after a roadside bomb killed six soldiers in neighboring Hangu district. Pakistan’s military said 10 suspected militants were also killed in separate operations in Hangu and North Waziristan between Sept. 15 and 17.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which borders Afghanistan, has become the center of a renewed militant campaign led primarily by the Pakistani Taliban, or Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, and its affiliates. The group is separate from but allied with Afghanistan’s Taliban and has intensified attacks since ending a ceasefire with Islamabad in late 2022.

Pakistan accuses Afghanistan’s Taliban government of sheltering TTP fighters and allowing them to organize cross-border attacks. Kabul denies the allegations.

Mosques located inside security compounds have previously been targeted.

A suicide bombing in January 2023 at a mosque in Peshawar’s Police Lines killed more than 100 people, most of them police officers.

In February this year, a bombing at a Shiite mosque in Islamabad killed at least 31 people and wounded more than 170.