Mosque Attack

Kohat, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. A car bomb tore into a mosque there during Friday prayers, killing at least 16 people.

Five of the dead were police officers, a senior police official in Peshawar told BBC News. The blast struck in Kohat district, near Pakistan's border with Afghanistan.

Hours later, a gun battle between attackers and security forces was still raging, BBC News reported. Officers said they had killed one assailant. Rescue crews worked the site through Friday, and the death toll was expected to climb.

President Asif Ali Zardari issued a statement. No group had claimed the attack by Friday.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has drawn militant violence for years, tied to groups working the Afghan border. It was Pakistan's most violent province, until this year. Balochistan, to the south, has since overtaken it, Al Jazeera reported, citing the Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies, an Islamabad think tank that tracks attacks nationwide.

The think tank called July the deadliest month of 2026 across Pakistan. In the first week alone, it counted 25 attacks and 102 deaths in Balochistan. By August, security forces had killed 115 fighters there, against 56 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, its data showed.

Al Jazeera traced much of the violence to the Pakistan Taliban, known as the TTP, a group formed in 2007 and separate from the Afghan Taliban. On September 1, security forces repelled a TTP-claimed attack on a customs post in Balochistan's Pishin district. Six security and customs personnel were killed.

The military has moved to respond. Faisal Naseer, a former counterintelligence official, was named national coordinator of the National Counter Terrorism Authority on September 4, Al Jazeera reported. Army chief Asim Munir was briefed on security measures the next day, during a visit to Quetta Garrison.

In Kohat, rescue crews worked into the evening. "His best wishes for the swift recovery of those injured in the explosion," Zardari said in his statement, according to BBC News.