Almost 100 lawyers had come to the hospital in the heart of Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province, after the body of their colleague, prominent attorney Bilal Kasi, was brought there.
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Earnest says the U.S.is committed to continuing its counterterrorism partnership with Pakistan and remains resolute in joining with the people of Pakistan in confronting terrorism there and across the region.
“We can not be hopeful about eradication of terrorist groups without the global community’s honest effort in blocking the ways of providing the terrorist groups with financial and arms aid and helping them to recruit”, he stated.
At least 55 people, mostly lawyers, were today killed and over 100 others injured when a powerful bomb ripped through a government-run hospital in Quetta in Pakistan’s restive southwestern Balochistan province, in a suspected suicide attack followed by gunfire. “That’s where the suicide bomber blew himself up”.
The latest victim, Bilal Anwar Kasi, was shot and killed while on his way to the city’s main court complex, senior police official Nadeem Shah told Reuters.
No group has so far claimed responsibility for the attack in the Baluchistan provincial capital.
No group has immediately claimed responsibility for Monday’s attack.
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”. The injured have been transferred to Bolan Medical College Hospital and Combined Military Hospital (CMH) apart of the Civil Hospital Quetta.
He says most of the victims of the bombing are lawyers. Government sources have admitted to 70 being killed, while Pakistan’s Urdu media led by Daily Millat, Baaghi TV, and Urdu Post claimed that 93 had died.
It is suspected that the attack was carried out by a suicide bomber, Bugti said.
Quetta and the rest of Baluchistan province have always been hit by insurgency.
“That this attack occurred at a hospital and appeared to target a gathering of lawyers mourning the death of a respected colleague makes it all the more heinous”, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said in a statement.
In May, Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour was killed by a US drone strike while travelling to Quetta from the Pakistan-Iran border. Sharif asked the local authorities to maintain utmost vigilance and beef up security in Quetta.
He also instructed health officials to provide the best treatment possible to those wounded in the attack.
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Another witness, lawyer Abdul Latif, said he had just arrived at the hospital to express his grief over Kasi’s killing, and was horrified to “see the bodies of dozens of other lawyers” lying in pools of blood on the floor. AP material published by LongIsland.com, is done so with explicit permission.
