Death toll rises to 93 in Pakistan mosque blast

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Death toll rises to 93 in Pakistan mosque blast

The death toll from a suicide bombing at a mosque in northwest Pakistan has risen to 93, a provincial government official said Tuesday after one of the worst attacks in months in the cash-strapped South Asian nation.

Riaz Khan Mahsud, the commissioner of Peshawar division of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, said bodies were still being recovered from the rubble of the mosque where a bomber set off explosives Monday, causing the roof to cave in. The mosque is inside a walled compound that houses the Peshawar police headquarters, and officials said most of the victims were police officers.

177 other people were injured, and 57 of them were still hospitalized, some in critical condition, according to Deputy commissioner Shafiullah Khan.

There were about 300 worshippers in the mosque at the time of the blast, said Ijaz Khan, Peshawar police chief.

He said that a portion of the building collapsed, and some of the people are alive but stranded there. Our teams are engaged in cutting steel to recover them.