PESHAWAR: The death toll from a militant attack on a police complex in northwestern Pakistan rose to 21 on Friday, including 15 police officers, while more than 100 people were wounded, a health official 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. A suicide bomber subsequently detonated explosives near the Special Branch building as security forces battled other armed attackers inside the compound, according to police.

“Twenty-one people, including 15 police officers, were killed and 103 others, including 73 policemen and 30 civilians, were injured in the Kohat Police Lines blast,” District Health Officer Kohat Dr. Nasir Hussain told Arab News via WhatsApp.

Hussain said some of the wounded remained under treatment and further details would be released later.

Police initially said an explosives-laden vehicle may have rammed the complex but that the precise cause of the first explosion was still being investigated.

Officers from the police and Counter Terrorism Department exchanged fire with attackers inside the compound, one of whom police described as a sniper and said had been killed.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack and police did not identify a specific group as being behind it.

Rescue teams worked through the damaged mosque and surrounding buildings, while footage shared on social media showed extensive damage to the mosque, with part of its roof and walls collapsed.

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 (TTP), 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.