At least 56 worshippers were killed and 194 others were wounded when a suicide bomber blew himself up inside a Friday prayers congregation inside a Shia mosque located in the Koocha Risaldar area of interior city, police and doctors said.

Lady Reading Hospital, city’s largest tertiary care hospital, confirmed 52 deaths and 194 injures including 10 critical wounded. On the other hand, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa police chief Moazza Jah Ansari said that the bombing was the work of one sole attacker, who first targeted the police guards deputed to protect the mosque.

Ansari said that a policeman was killed at the gate while the others were critically wounded. The police chief said that he attacker then rushed inside the mosque, where he detonated explosives strapped to his body in the third row of the mosque. He said that six kilograms of explosives were used in the attack.