A suicide bomber struck outside the gates of a district court in Islamabad on Tuesday, detonating his explosives next to a police car and killing 12 people, Pakistan’s interior minister said, the latest in an uptick in violence across the country.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the midday blast, which also wounded at least 27 people, but authorities have struggled over the past months with a resurgent Pakistani Taliban, border tensions and a fragile ceasefire with neighboring Afghanistan.

A Pakistani Taliban spokesman later denied the militant group was involved in the attack.

Witnesses described scenes of mayhem in the immediate aftermath of the explosion, which was heard for miles away and came at a busy time of day when the area outside the court is typically crowded with hundreds of visitors attending court hearings.

The attacker tried to “enter the court premises but, failing to do so, targeted a police vehicle,” Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi told journalists. Earlier reports by Pakistani state-run media and two security officials said a car bomb had caused the explosion.

Naqvi alleged that the attack was “carried out by Indian-backed elements and Afghan Taliban proxies” linked to the Pakistani Taliban. Still, he said authorities are “looking into all aspects” of the explosion.

Outside the court

Police quickly cordoned off the area around the court as a cloud of smoke rose into the sky following the blast. The casualties were mostly passersby or those who had arrived for court appointments, according to Islamabad police.

More than a dozen badly wounded people were screaming for help as ambulances rushed to the scene.

“People started running in all directions,” Mohammad Afzal, who was at the court at the time, told The Associated Press.

Naqvi said the discovery nearby of a severed head, which the police said belonged to the attacker, confirmed the blast was a suicide attack. The attacker was also later spotted in CCTV footage from the site, he said.

Overnight attack at an army-run college

Meanwhile, Pakistani security forces said they foiled an attempt by militants to take cadets hostage at an army-run college overnight, when a suicide car bomber and five other attackers targeted the facility in a northwestern province on Monday night.

The authorities blamed the Pakistani Taliban, which is a separate militant group but allied with the Afghan Taliban. The Pakistani Taliban denied involvement in Monday’s attack. On Tuesday, Mohammad Khurasani, a spokesman for the group, also denied its involvement in the attack in Islamabad.

The attack at the army-run college started on Monday evening, when a bomber tried to storm the school in Wana, a city in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province near the Afghan border. The area had until recent years served as a base for the Pakistani Taliban, al-Qaida and other foreign militants.

According to Alamgir Mahsud, the local police chief, two of the militants were quickly killed by troops while three others managed to enter the compound before being cornered in an administrative block. The army’s commandoes were among the forces conducting a clearance operation and an intermittent exchange of fire that went on for hours, Mahsud added.

He said the clearance operation was still underway on Tuesday, some 20 hours after the attack. The administrative block is away from the building housing hundreds of cadets and other staff, who were quickly evacuated to safer places by Pakistani commandoes.

There were no immediate reports of anyone from the students or the staff being hurt.

Casualties were highly likely among the troops, but the Pakistani army has not provided any information so far.

Prime minister promises accountability

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif denounced both the attack in Islamabad and in Wana, and called for a full investigation, according to a statement issued in Islamabad.

He said those responsible must be brought to justice swiftly.

“We will ensure the perpetrators are apprehended and held accountable,” he said.

Sharif described attacks on unarmed civilians as “reprehensible” and added: “We will not allow the blood of innocent Pakistanis to go to waste.”

Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Mohammad Asif said on X that the country is in a state of war and laid the blame with the Taliban government in Afghanistan, which Islamabad accuses of sheltering the Pakistani Taliban.

Afghanistan “can act to stop terrorism in Pakistan, but bringing this war to Islamabad is a message from Kabul,” Asif said and warned that Pakistan “has the strength to respond fully.”

Pakistan has outlawed the Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP. The group is also designated a terrorist organization by both the United States and the United Nations. The Afghan Taliban takeover in Kabul in 2021 emboldened the TTP, and many of the group’s leaders and fighters are believed to have taken refuge in Afghanistan. Kabul denies it’s protecting the TTP.

Pakistan has seen a surge in militant attacks in recent years. The deadliest assault on a school occurred in 2014, when a breakaway TTP faction killed 154 people, mostly children, at an army-run school in Peshawar.

The military claimed the attackers in Wana wanted to repeat what had happened in the 2014 attack in Peshawar.

Afghanistan-Pakistan peace talks stall

Tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan have risen in recent months. Kabul has blamed Islamabad for drone strikes on Oct. 9 that killed several people in the Afghan capital and vowed retaliation.

The ensuing cross-border fighting killed dozens of soldiers, civilians and militants before Qatar brokered a ceasefire on Oct. 19, which remains in place.

Since then, two rounds of peace talks have been held in Istanbul — the latest on Thursday — but ended without agreement after Kabul refused to provide a written assurance that the TTP and other militant groups would not use Afghan territory against Pakistan.

An earlier, brief ceasefire between Pakistan and the TTP, brokered by Kabul in 2022, collapsed later after the group accused Islamabad of violating it.

(AP)