But he said he didn’t know he would “see the bodies of dozens of other lawyers” killed and wounded shortly after arriving. Quetta has recently been the site of several similar bombings.
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An emergency has been declared in all hospitals in Quetta and numerous wounded have been rushed to the Army hospital and the more critical airlifted to Karachi.
Quetta Civil Hospital director Abdul Rehman put the initial death toll from the blast at 64 – 18 of these being lawyers – and said staff were treating 92 injured people.
The attack, which stunned the judicial community, also underscored concerns that militants in Pakistan are still capable of striking in the heart of the country’s cities and towns – despite government claims of dismantling various terror networks.
Senior attorney Mohammad Ashraf said on Tuesday that lawyers will also stage rallies across Pakistan to condemn the assault. Pakistan deployed extra police units outside court building. The latest is a suicide bombing attack in Quetta, the provincial capital of Balochistan in West Pakistan.
Pakistan Bar Council and Supreme Court Bar Association have announced a week of mourning in the wake of the attack. Afridi said most of the dead were lawyers. “They were in shock and grief”, added the journalist.
The blast was so powerful that they both fell down, he said.
Balochistan Home Minister Sarfraz Bugti said: “The blast occurred after a number of lawyers and some journalists had gathered at the hospital following the death of Bilal Anwar Kasi, the president of the Balochistan Bar Association, in a separate shooting incident early this morning”.
Witnesses described horrifying scenes of bodies scattered on the ground the wounded screaming out for help.
Dozens of other people were injured in the blast, which happened in the grounds of a government-run hospital in Quetta. Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, part of the TTP, said it was behind the deadliest attack in Pakistan so far this year, a bombing in a crowded Lahore park that killed 75 people on Easter Sunday.
Editor’s note: Correction – A previous version of this story published on August 8, 2016, stated that the Pakistan Taliban, rather than a splinter group, claimed responsibility for the attack.
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“A martyr from the Islamic State detonated his explosive belt at a gathering of justice ministry employees and Pakistani policemen in the city of Quetta”, Amaq said. The IS statement did not mention the killing of Kasi.
