Here is a list of major attacks by militant groups in the country since 2007:
October 18, 2007:
Bomb attacks targeting former premier Benazir Bhutto kill 139 people in Karachi as she returns to Pakistan for the first time in eight years. Bhutto herself dies in a gun and suicide attack on December 27.
August 21, 2008:
Twin suicide attacks kill 64 people outside Pakistan's main arms factory at Wah near Islamabad.
September 20, 2008:
Sixty people are killed when a suicide truck bomb destroys part of the five-star Marriott hotel in Islamabad.
October 28, 2009:
A car bomb rips apart a market in the northwestern city of Peshawar, killing 125 people.
December 7-9, 2009:
At least 66 people die in four attacks at a market in Lahore, Pakistan's second biggest city.
January 1, 2010:
A suicide car bomb kills 101 people at a village volleyball game in the northwestern district of Bannu.
May 28, 2010:
Gunmen and suicide bombers storm mosques belonging to the Ahmadi religious minority in Lahore, killing 82 people.
July 9, 2010:
A suicide bomber kills 105 people in a busy market in the northwestern tribal district of Mohmand.
September 3, 2010:
A suicide attack kills 59 at a Shia Muslim rally in Quetta.
November 5, 2010:
A suicide bomber kills 68 people during Friday prayers in the northwest's Darra Adam Khel area.
April 3, 2011:
Fifty die after two suicide bombers attack a Sufi shrine in the central town of Dera Ghazi Khan.
May 13, 2011:
Two suicide bombers kill at least 98 people outside a police training centre in Charsadda.
January 10, 2013:
A double suicide attack on a snooker club kills 92 in a district of Quetta populated by Shia Hazaras.
February 16, 2013:
A bomb at a market in Hazara Town, a Shiite neighbourhood near Quetta, kills 89.
March 3, 2013:
A car bomb explodes in a Shia neighbourhood in Karachi, killing 45.
September 22, 2013:
Eighty-two people die when two suicide bombers attack a church in Peshawar after a Sunday service.
November 2, 2014:
Fifty-five people are killed by a suicide bomber at the main Pakistan-India border crossing.
December 16, 2014:
Taliban insurgents storm an army-run school in Peshawar, killing more than 150 people, most of them children.
January 30, 2015:
Sixty-one people are killed as a suicide bomber hits a Shia mosque in Shikarpur in southern Pakistan.
May 13, 2015:
The first attack officially claimed by the Islamic State group in Pakistan kills 45 Shia Muslims in Karachi.
March 27, 2016:
Seventy-five people are killed and hundreds injured in an explosion that targets Christians near a park in Lahore.
August 8, 2016:
At least 73 people die and dozens are wounded when a blast tears through mourners at a hospital in Quetta.
October 25, 2016:
A brutal gun and suicide bomb assault on a police academy in southwestern Balochistan kills 61 people, the deadliest strike on a security installation in the country's history, jointly claimed by the Islamic State group and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.
November 12, 2016:
At least 52 pilgrims are killed, including many women and children, at a shrine in Balochistan.
February 16, 2017:
At least 70 people are killed when a bomb claimed by IS rips through a Sufi shrine in Sindh province, wounding more than 200.
The attack comes after a series of bloody extremist assaults in less than a week, most claimed by the Pakistani Taliban.
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