Suicide car bomb and gunfight kill at least 21 at Kohat Police Lines mosque

A suicide bomber drove an explosives-laden vehicle into the gate of the old Police Lines in Kohat during Friday prayers on 18 September, collapsing part of the mosque and the compound wall. Gunmen then tried to enter the complex. Provincial police chief Zulfiqar Hameed said the first blast was followed by fire toward the Counter-Terrorism Department building and the Special Branch offices.

Death figures moved through the afternoon as hospitals counted bodies. Dawn, citing senior police and district health officials, put the toll at 21, including 15 police. Al Jazeera later reported at least 27 dead, including six civilians and 15 officers, with about 75 wounded. District Hospital medical superintendent Dr Tahir Ali Shah earlier told the official Associated Press of Pakistan that 17 people had died and 73 were injured, 15 of them critical and sent on to Peshawar. Rescue 1122 spokesman Bilal Ahmed Faizi said the blast came at about 1:15 p.m.

The variance is typical of a compound attack that mixed a vehicle bomb, a mosque collapse and a running gunfight. What did not change across the accounts is the target: a mosque inside a police headquarters, at the hour when officers, families and nearby residents were at prayer.

How the assault unfolded

Hameed told Dawn the bomber hit the gate first. Several attackers then moved on the CTD building and were killed there. About three others tried to reach the Special Branch building. Central Police Office spokesman Abdul Salam Khalid said six militants, including the bomber and a sniper, were killed as the clearance operation ran into the late afternoon. Police said the operation was in its final stages by about 3:30 p.m. The Hangu-Kohat road was closed.

Residents said the blast was audible well beyond the compound. The mosque was badly damaged. One outer wall of the police station came down. Most of the wounded, Faizi told the Associated Press, were worshippers rather than officers on duty outside.

Ittehadul Mujahideen, a grouping linked to Taliban commander Hafiz Gul Bahadur, claimed the attack. The name means Mujahideen alliance. The group is active in the former tribal districts and in the Kohat-North Waziristan belt. Some early local reports also spoke of Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan. The claim that circulated with the most detail was the Bahadur-linked one.

Why Kohat, and why a mosque inside Police Lines

Kohat sits about 60 kilometres southwest of Peshawar, on the road system that links the provincial capital to Hangu and the former Frontier Regions. Old Police Lines is both a barracks area and a place of worship. Attacking it at Friday prayer puts police, their relatives and civilians in the same room. That is the point of the method. It also forces a gunfight inside a damaged compound, which is harder to clear than an open street.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has seen a sustained rise in attacks since the Afghan Taliban returned to Kabul in 2021 and since Pakistani militant networks rebuilt sanctuary across the border. The Hafiz Gul Bahadur network has long sat at the edge of that conflict: sometimes distinct from the main TTP shura, sometimes aligned with it, always present in North Waziristan and the districts that adjoin it. A claim from that network after a Police Lines mosque bombing is a statement about who can still reach the interior of a district headquarters.

Al Jazeera correspondent Kamal Hyder, reporting from Islamabad, said at least six of the attackers were killed in the fighting. That matches the police count. It does not answer how a vehicle packed with explosives reached the gate of a police lines mosque at prayer time.

What the hospitals and the road closure show

The transfer of 15 critical patients to Peshawar tells more than a headline toll. Kohat’s district hospital absorbed the first wave and then sent on the cases it could not hold. That pattern, plus the road closure, will shape the next 48 hours: funerals, a larger security sweep, and pressure on the provincial government to explain the breach.

Figures will likely settle overnight. The durable facts are already on the record. A car bomb hit a mosque inside a police headquarters on Friday. At least 15 officers are among the dead. A Bahadur-linked group claimed the strike. Six attackers were killed on the ground. The compound that was supposed to be the safest place in Kohat at 1:15 p.m. was the one that fell first.