Asuicide bombingat a mosque inPakistan's capital cityIslamabadkilled at least 31 people on Friday, local authorities said, with a police source saying that more than 130 people had been wounded.

City officials said "31 people were killed in the blast" at the Imam Bargah Qasr-e-Khadijatul Kubra mosque in the Tarlai area on the outskirts of Islamabad.

Images from the site showed bloodied bodies lying on the carpeted mosque floor surrounded by shards of glass, debris and panicked worshippers.

The police source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the toll was "expected to rise further".

The explosion hit the mosque during Friday prayers, police official Zafar Iqbal said.

A security source told AFP that a suicide attacker was responsible for the blast.

"The attacker was stopped at the gate and detonated himself," the source said on condition of anonymity.

An AFP photographer outside the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) hospital saw dozens of wounded people arriving.

Pakistan's Prime MinisterShehbaz Sharifcondemned the blast, expressing "deep grief" for the explosion.

Shiites, who are in the minority in the predominantlySunniMuslim nation of 241 million, have been targeted in sectarian violence in the past, including bythe Sunni Islamist militant group Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, which considers them heretics.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP and Reuters)

Originally published on France24