Pakistan`s defense minister, Khawaja Asif, said on Tuesday that a deadly suicide bombing in the capital was a "message from Kabul," casting doubt on the viability of ongoing negotiations with the Taliban and calling the incident "a wake-up" call for the entire country.

"This is no longer a war confined to border areas," Asif wrote on the social media platform X. "The suicide attack in Islamabad should be seen as wake-up call. This is a war that affects all of Pakistan."

The explosion, which occurred outside a district court in Islamabad`s G-11 sector, killed at least 12 people and injured 20 others, according to Pakistani media and Al Jazeera. The attack came just one day after a deadly car bombing near the Red Fort in New Delhi, India, also left at least 12 people dead.

Asif warned that the optimism surrounding talks with the Taliban may have been misplaced. "To expect fruitful negotiations with the Taliban may be overly optimistic," he said. He also claimed that the Taliban have the capacity to prevent terrorist attacks inside Pakistan, but have not done so.

"The fact that this violence has reached Islamabad is itself a message from Kabul - one that, God willing, Pakistan is fully capable of answering," he added.

Pakistan has repeatedly accused the Taliban of harboring fighters from Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, a banned militant group that has waged an insurgency against the Pakistani state for over a decade. The group shares ideological roots with the Taliban in Afghanistan but operates independently.

In recent months, tensions between Islamabad and the Taliban have escalated. After an eight-day border standoff earlier this fall, the two sides have held three rounds of negotiations, including two sessions hosted in Istanbul. The talks, however, have produced no breakthroughs. Pakistan`s main demand has been that the Taliban take action to prevent the TTP from launching attacks from Afghan soil - a demand the Taliban have largely rejected, labeling it an internal Pakistani matter.

While the Taliban have denied that TTP fighters are operating inside Afghanistan, a United Nations monitoring report published in September estimated that the group has roughly 6,000 fighters based within the country.

The Islamabad attack is the latest in a string of violent incidents across Pakistan, many of which have targeted security personnel and government institutions. Pakistani officials have warned that such attacks may intensify if regional cooperation on counterterrorism continues to falter.