KOHAT / PESHAWAR, Nov 5: Terrorist attacks on two mosques, one in Darra Adamkhel and the other near Peshawar, left at least 68 people dead on Friday.

At least 65 people, 18 children among them, were killed and 70 injured in a suicide attack on the Friday congregation in the mosque in Darra Adamkhel area of the Kohat Frontier Region.

The mosque is about 1km from the main camp of security forces set up in a degree college. The banned Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan denied having any hand in the attack and, instead, blamed foreign agents fighting security forces in tribal areas. It warned journalists of stern action and said they had launched a smear campaign against the TTP.

Security officials in Peshawar said they suspected that a militant group led by Tariq Afridi carried out the attack.

Their target, the officials said, was the Momin group which had raised a lashkar and supported security forces’ action against militants loyal to Tariq Afridi.

Witnesses said people were offering Friday prayers when a blast rocked the mosque adjacent to the hujra of Haji Wali Mohammad.

“I was standing in the last row when the huge blast took place,” injured teenager Mehrabullah said in Peshawar’s Lady Reading Hospital (LRH).

Security personnel cordoned off the village after the attack. Political Agent Shahidullah Khan said the suicide bomber was a boy about 16 years old. Parts of his body had been taken to Kohat, along with another body.

“A foreign hand is definitely involved in attacks on mosques and other religious places and local extremists are being used to destabilise the country,” one official said. He said that about 10kgs of explosives had been used in the attack. He said that 50 injured people, including children and women, had been taken to the LRH, adding that 18 injured people had died on way to Peshawar.

The trauma centre of the LRH was full of injured people and mutilated bodies. Most of the injured were taken to Peshawar by relatives and volunteers in cars and vans because of a shortage of ambulances.

In the terrorist attack near Peshawar, at least three people were killed and 17 injured. Here the target was a mosque in Sulemankhel area of Badbher.

Superintendent of Police (Rural Circle) Abdul Kalam Khan said that assailants attacked the mosque with two grenades when Isha prayers were being offered there.

The area is near the Bara subdivision of Khyber Agency. SP Abdul Kalam said that although police had strengthened security, militants managed to enter the area through fields.

“We were having dinner when we heard huge blasts and screams of people,” Nigar Ali, who lived nearby, said.

Local people took the injured to the LRH because ambulances took time in reaching there from Peshawar.

Rescuers faced difficulty in retrieving the bodies and helping the injured because there was a power cut at that time.