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Police officers and ambulances attend the scene after a blast outside a court building in Islamabad, Pakistan, on Tuesday, November 11, 2025. (Salahuddin/Reuters via CNN Newsource)
By Sophia Saifi and Azaz Syed, CNN
Islamabad (CNN) — A rare explosion in Pakistan’s capital city of Islamabad on Tuesday has left 12 dead and 20 injured, the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences Hospital told reporters.
A security source in Pakistan told CNN that the explosion near the city’s High Court early on Tuesday afternoon is being investigated as a suicide attack.
The country’s president Asif Ali Zardari released a statement condemning what he called a “suicide blast” near the city’s High Court.
Jamaat-ul-Ahrar (JuA), a faction of the militant Pakistani Taliban (TTP), claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement seen by CNN. The JuA has been behind some of the deadliest terrorist attacks in Pakistan in the past decade. However the TTP distanced itself from the attack, according to the group’s spokesman Mohammad Khurasani.
Islamabad requires a high level of security to enter and exit the city with specific security zones throughout the capital. The explosion took place in the parking lot of the city’s busy judicial complex in a district full of high-ranking government offices.
Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Asif stated on X that Pakistan is in a “state of war” and that this attack should be taken as a “wake-up call” with regards to negotiations with neighboring Afghanistan.
Pakistan has faced a surge in Islamist violence since the Afghan Taliban swept Kabul in 2021. Islamabad has long accused Kabul of harboring the TTP.
The Afghan Taliban’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs released a statement expressing “deep sorrow and condemnation” regarding both the attack in Islamabad as well as the attack on the cadet college in the country’s northwest. The statement from Afghanistan did not address the remarks of Pakistan’s defence minister.
Both the embassies of China and the United States condemned the attack. The US Chargé d’Affaires Natalie Baker said in a statement that “the United States stands in solidarity with Pakistan in the struggle against terrorism.”
Clashes between the Pakistani and Afghan militaries in October saw the worst violence between the two countries in years.
An attempt to maintain a ceasefire fell apart when peace talks between the two neighbors failed in Istanbul last week following the failure to establish a long-term deal regarding hostile militant groups in Afghanistan that operate against Pakistan.
Asif had stated that this attack “all the way to Islamabad is a message from Kabul, to which — praise be to God — Pakistan has the full strength to respond.”
The attack comes less than a day after a cadet college was attacked by militants in northwestern Pakistan.
The-CNN-Wire
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