The attack occurred in Dera Ismail Khan, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, said Bilal Faizi, a spokesman for the provincial emergency service. Local police chief Safdar Baloch said most of those killed and wounded were security personnel and passers-by.

The Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement. Pakistan has experienced a surge in militant attacks in recent years, many of them claimed by the TTP and the outlawed Baloch Liberation Army, or BLA, a separatist group mainly active in neighbouring Balochistan province.

The TTP is separate from but allied with the Afghan Taliban, which returned to power in Afghanistan in 2021.