A powerful bomb exploded at a mosque within a pro-Taliban seminary in northwestern Pakistan on Friday, killing a top cleric and four other worshippers and wounding dozens of others ahead of the fasting month of Ramadan, according to local police.

The blast occurred in Akora Khattak, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, district police chief Abdul Rashid said.

He said Hamidul Haq, who is the head of a faction of the Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam (JUI) party, is also among the dead. Rashid said officers are investigating, and the dead and wounded are being transported to hospitals.

The slain cleric Haq is the son of Maulana Samiul Haq, known as the “father of the Taliban,” who was killed in a knife attack at his home in 2018.

Haq’s family confirmed he was killed in Friday's attack and appealed to his followers to remain peaceful. Haq was also in charge of the Jamia Haqqania seminary, where many Afghan Taliban had studied in the past two decades.

Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif condemned the attack and ordered authorities to provide the best possible treatment to the wounded.

No group claimed responsibility

Zulfiqar Hameed, the provincial police chief, said the attack was apparently a suicide bombing, but bomb disposal experts are still investigating. No group has immediately claimed responsibility. Hameed said Haq was the target of the attack.

Hameed, the provincial police chief, said more than a dozen police officers were guarding the mosque when the attack occurred, and Haq's seminary also had its own security.

Pakistan has witnessed a surge in attacks in recent years. As many as 101 people, mostly police officers, were killed in 2023 when a suicide attack targeted a mosque in Peshawar, the capital of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

Pakistani authorities have blamed the Pakistani Taliban, who are known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP, for the previous most of the attacks.