The Police Lines compound sits within Peshawar's Red Zone, a high-security district that houses the headquarters of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Police, counterterrorism offices, and other government buildings. Its security was supposed to be the kind that prevents exactly this sort of attack: multiple checkpoints, armed guards, restricted access. The bomber's police uniform turned that security apparatus into his cover. A constable later identified as Muhammad Wali had provided the uniform, the suicide vest, and reconnaissance. He dropped the bomber off near the compound, and the disguise did the rest. The mosque's main hall had a capacity of 250 to 300 people, and it was full. The detonation caused what survivors described as "a huge burst of flames" followed by a plume of black dust. When rescue workers arrived, officials said most of the people they found were already dead. The final toll reached 84 killed and 217 injured.

The bombing arrived at the crest of a wave. The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan had been battered by military offensives in 2014 and 2017, driven across the border into Afghanistan where it regrouped under Noor Wali Mehsud. The group merged with splinter factions, including Jamaat-ul-Ahrar in 2020, rebuilding strength from safe havens that the Afghan Taliban, after seizing Kabul in August 2021, refused to dismantle. When a June 2022 ceasefire between the TTP and Pakistan's government collapsed in November, the militants called for nationwide attacks. The frequency of strikes against security forces in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa escalated sharply. Peshawar, the provincial capital and a city intimate with violence, had already endured the 2014 Army Public School massacre and a 2022 bombing at a Shia mosque by the Islamic State-Khorasan Province. The Police Lines bombing fit a grimly familiar pattern, yet its scale and audacity, penetrating the most fortified security zone in the city, marked a new threshold.

Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a faction within the TTP's umbrella structure, claimed the attack, saying it avenged the death of their founder Omar Khalid Khorasani, whom they stated Pakistani security forces had killed in August 2022. Shortly afterward, the TTP's central leadership issued a denial of involvement. Analysts noted this was likely strategic: the TTP is a loose confederation of factions whose relationships provide built-in plausible deniability. The more probable reality, according to Pakistani officials and independent commentators, was that the TTP's leadership knew about and tacitly approved the operation while maintaining enough distance to disavow it. The result was the worst of both outcomes for Pakistan. A militant faction embedded within the TTP had the operational capability to breach Peshawar's most secure compound, and the umbrella organization sheltering that faction could claim clean hands.

Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah and Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari condemned the attack. International condemnation came from India, Canada, China, the United States, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, and the United Nations. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres' spokesperson called it "particularly abhorrent" that such an attack occurred at a place of worship. But in Peshawar, grief moved quickly to fury. On 1 February, dozens of police officers protested in the streets, demanding an investigation into how the bomber had penetrated their own headquarters compound. Throughout February, protests amassing thousands of people swept across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, directed not only at the militants but at a government that many felt had failed to protect its own security forces. Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi denied that the attack was planned from Afghan soil, further inflaming tensions between the two countries.

The investigation eventually unraveled the network behind the bombing. Constable Muhammad Wali confessed that he had been recruited through Facebook by a Jamaat-ul-Ahrar operative identified as "Junaid" based in Afghanistan. In 2021, Wali crossed the Chaman border into Afghanistan, received 20,000 rupees, and joined the group. He was arrested by Afghan authorities on his return but released after Jamaat-ul-Ahrar intervened. On the day of the attack, Wali provided the bomber with his disguise and dropped him off near the mosque. Sarbakaf Mohmand, a senior Jamaat-ul-Ahrar and TTP commander identified as one of the main perpetrators, died in Afghanistan on 20 June 2023. On 12 November 2025, Qari Hidayatullah, another key figure behind the bombing, was killed in an explosion in Nangarhar province, Afghanistan. Justice came slowly, and it came across a border that neither government fully controls.