Death toll from a suicide bombing at a wedding ceremony in northwestern Pakistan rose to seven on Saturday, police said, showing the growing threat posed by militant violence in regions bordering Afghanistan.
The attack occurred Friday in Dera Ismail Khan district, part of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, when a bomber detonated explosives inside a building hosting a wedding attended by members of a local peace committee. Authorities said four of the wounded later died in hospital, bringing the total number of fatalities to seven.
Police official Muhammad Adnan said the blast tore through a structure used by members of the peace committee, a community-based group backed by the Pakistani government to help counter militant influence along the Afghan frontier.
“These committees are made up of local residents and tribal elders,” Adnan said, explaining that they support Islamabad’s broader counterinsurgency strategy in the volatile border regions.
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Three people were confirmed dead shortly after the attack on Friday, while nearly a dozen others were injured, according to police. No militant group has claimed responsibility for the bombing.
The Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), has repeatedly accused peace committee members of collaborating with the state and has previously labeled them traitors. The group is an umbrella organization of several Sunni militant factions that has waged an insurgency against Pakistan since 1997.
The TTP seeks to overthrow Pakistan’s current system of governance and impose its strict interpretation of Islamic law. It operates primarily in Pakistan’s northwest and along the porous border with Afghanistan, according to security analysts and reporting by Reuters and the BBC.
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Islamabad has accused Afghanistan’s Taliban-led government of allowing Pakistani militants to plan and launch attacks from Afghan soil. Kabul has rejected those allegations, maintaining that militancy in Pakistan is an internal issue.
The bombing comes amid a broader surge in militant attacks across Pakistan, particularly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and neighboring Balochistan, where security forces and civilian targets have increasingly come under assault over the past year.