At the Khadija Tul Kubra mosque in Islamabad’s Tarlai Kalan neighbourhood, on the afternoon of 6 February, worshippers had gathered for Friday prayers. A man fought past the security guards at the entrance, opened fire, and detonated. The Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences received the injured in waves through the afternoon. At least thirty-two people were killed and 170 wounded, confirmed by the UN Security Council in formal session, though some Pakistani media sources reported the toll rising toward forty in subsequent days as the critically injured died. It was the deadliest attack in Pakistan’s capital since a truck bomb took apart the Marriott Hotel in 2008.
Sixteen days later, at midnight on 22 February, Pakistani warplanes found Girdi Kas village in Nangarhar’s Bihsud district. A farmer named Nezakat, thirty-five years old, was in his room with his wife when the bombs landed. He came out and carried his aunt from the debris. Then his son called to him from under the rubble, injured. Thirteen members of Nezakat’s family were found dead. Five more were missing when he spoke to Radio Free Europe’s Radio Azadi. The youngest person killed in the strike was one year old. The oldest was eighty. Eighteen members of a single family were buried together in a mass grave in the village while neighbours who had run toward the sound stood in the early morning and dug.
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