Kohat, Pakistan: On September 18, 2026, over 12 civilians and 15 police personnel, were martyred while over 100 namazi were injured in a suicide blast at a mosque in Kohat’s Police Lines during Friday prayers. This was the second horrific incident of a terror attack on a Police Lines Mosque after January 30, 2023, when a suicide bomber set off an explosion within the Peshawar Police Lines Mosque, killing 84 people and injuring 217. Both mosques were located within a high-security compounds.
In today’s incident, a suicide blast took place at 1:20 pm during Friday prayers at a mosque located at Police Lines on Hangu Road in Kohat, followed by a terrorist attack involving several terrorists.
KP has become a hotbed of terrorism since the Afghan Taliban came into power in Afghanistan, as terrorists are receiving all kinds of support, including funds and weapons, from the Afghan Taliban, while the KP government has totally failed to control terrorism and has rather surrendered to terrorists but is not ready to allow the federal government to take large-scale action in troubled areas. Last five years’ incidents show that the PTI government in KP has neither expressed any interest in fighting terrorism nor is it ready to support security forces in taking large-scale operations, although security forces continue to conduct intelligence-based operations (IBOs).
The Chief Minister of KP, Sohail Afridi, instead of handling terrorism, spends most of his time outside Adiala Jail, Rawalpindi, meeting the founding chairman of the party, and nowadays he is on a country-wide tour to attract political support from the public for PTI’s September 27 protest, which has been declared illegal by the Islamabad High Court today.
The conduct of the CM KP is so indifferent and insensitive that even PTI members are expressing displeasure because the province is burning in terrorism and he only focuses on politics, while his only duty seems to be to meet and please the founding chairman of the party. The Chief Minister Afridi even did not take pain to attend the funeral prayers for 15 police personnel martyred in the Police Lines blast and just released a statement of condemnation and even did not visit the mosque where this incident took place.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Inspector General of Police Zulfiqar Hameed, Information Minister Shafiullah Jan, Law Minister Aftab Alam, the General Officer Commanding, Kohat Commissioner, other political and social figures, the martyrs’ families and a large number of people attended the funeral
It may be remembered, in 2010, 20 people, mostly the relatives of policemen, were killed and more than 90 injured in a remote-controlled bomb blast inside a police colony located just behind the Kohat Police Lines.
