DEATH TOLL IN in the suicide bomb explosion at Civil Hospital in Quetta on Monday has gone up to 93. however official maintained that 71 people have died and 108 are still critically injured.
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He said most of the injured people included lawyers while the dead also included several lawyers and two journalists.
The bomber struck as a crowd of lawyers and journalists crammed into the Emergency Department of the hospital, after the fatal shooting of president of the Balochistan Bar Association earlier the same morning. The attack injured more than 100 people.
The Taliban faction, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, said it was behind both the hospital attack and the killing of Mr. Kasi. If confirmed, that would be a first for the group in Pakistan – though the claim may be related to the fact that in the past, the Jamaat-ul Ahrar splinter group has expressed support for the Islamic State.
Hyder said an attack took place at the same hospital in 2010.
“It was a suicide attack”, said the police official, Zahoor Ahmed Afridi.
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The Pakistani staff army chief, General Raheel Sharif, traveled to Quetta Monday and met some of those wounded at the Quetta Civil Hospital.
Geo News said that a total of 37 bodies were shifted to the mortuary of the Civil Hospital, 15 in military hospital and one in Bolan Medical Complex of the city.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif condemned the blast, saying, “No one will be allowed to disturb peace in the province that has been restored due to countless sacrifices of security forces, police and the people of Balochistan”.
“It seems it was a pre-planned attack”, he said. “We remain resolute in joining with the people of Pakistan in confronting terrorism in Pakistan and across the region”, it said in a statement.
It is the second deadliest in Pakistan this year so far, after a bombing in a crowded park in Lahore over Easter killed 75.
Pakistan Bar Council in a statement said, “Lawyers throughout the country will boycott court proceedings in protest against the killing of lawyers in Quetta yesterday”. They emerged as powerful actors in 2007, when then-President Pervez Musharraf fired the chief justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry.
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The lawyers were at the unit because earlier in the day armed men, who are still unidentified, had shot Bilal Anwar Kasi, reports said. Later, political parties joined the campaign and Musharraf was ultimately forced to resign in 2008 and Chaudhry was reinstated.
