The Bajur district in Pakistan was rocked by a bomb blast on Sunday evening after a suicide bomber carried out an attack, killing 44 people in the bomb blast and injuring over 200 till now. 

It must be noted that the Bajur district is a stronghold of militants, and is near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

The suicide blast in Pakistan was meant to target the leaders and supporters of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-F (JUI-F) party, which is a government coalition party, which was conducting a rally in Khar, a town which is near the Afghan border of Pakistan.

The Bajur district near the Afghan border was a stronghold of the Pakistani Taliban — a close ally of Afghanistan’s Taliban government — before the Pakistani army drove the militants out of the area.

Supporters of hardline Pakistani cleric and political party leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman, whose Jamiat Ulema Islam generally supports regional Islamists, were meeting in Bajur in a hall close to a market outside the district capital.

This suicide bombing has become one of Pakistan’s bloodiest attacks in recent years just as the death toll from the bomb blast climbed to 44, with dozens left injured. Eyewitnesses recounted the horror of the attack, where they could see pools of blood on the ground and limbs scattered across the rally.

The Pakistan Taliban, or TTP, said in a statement sent to The Associated Press that the bombing was aimed at setting Islamists against each other. Zabiullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Afghan Taliban, said that “such crimes cannot be justified in any way.”

One of the injured party supporters from the blast said that the tent had collapsed from one side, making it impossible for panicked people to escape. The bomb was deployed in close proximity to the stage of the political rally, with the aim of injuring the maximum number of party leaders and supporters.

(With inputs from agencies)