Pakistan is paying compensation totaling more than $700,000 to the families of 40 people killed in a suicide bombing at a Shiite mosque in Islamabad this month, the prime minister’s office said on Thursday.
The February 6 attack claimed by the Daesh group on the outskirts of the capital was the deadliest in Islamabad since a 2008 truck bombing that killed 60 people at the Marriott Hotel.
“Relief cheques have been delivered to the heirs of 36 martyrs belonging to Islamabad,” Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s office said in a statement, adding each victim’s family received five million rupees (around $17,800).
Cheques will also be delivered to four families of victims living outside Islamabad, the statement said.
Although officials have not released a final death toll, the statement marked the first official acknowledgement that 40 people were killed in the blast.
