HRCP said, “No amount of money could make up for the loss of the bereaved families, but the least the government can do now is give adequate compensation to the families of the victims and the injured so that at least their financial needs are met at this hard time”.
Advertisement
Schools and markets were closed in Quetta, also in protest over the attack, which was claimed by a breakaway faction of the Pakistani Taliban, the Jamaat-ul-Ahrar militant group.
Pakistani activists light candles Monday in Peshawar to pay tribute to the victims of a bombing in Quetta. The claim, however, could not be independently verified.
“The United States condemns in the strongest terms the terrorist attacks in Quetta”, the US State Department Spokesperson Elizabeth Trudeau said during a press briefing in Washington. Afridi said most of the dead were lawyers who had gathered after Kasi’s body was brought to the hospital.
“No crater found at the site of the attack and it appears the bomber had the explosives strapped to his chest”, a police officer said.
Ali Zafar, president of the Supreme Court Bar Association of Pakistan, told reporters in the eastern city of Lahore, “We (lawyers) have been targeted because we always raise our voice for people’s rights and for democracy”.
The Pakistani Bar Association said lawyers across the country would hold a one-day strike in all courts and spend a week in mourning.
Waliur Rehman says he was taking his ailing father to the hospital’s emergency ward when the explosion shook the building on Monday. They are considered an important part of civil society and emerged as powerful actors in 2007, when then-President Pervez Musharraf fired the chief justice, Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry. He was about 200 meters (yards) away from where the bomb struck, he added.
Balochistan Home Minister Mir Sarfaraz Bugti said the suicide bomber had blown himself up at the entrance of the hospital as many lawyers and mourners had gathered to receive the body of slain Kasi.
At a Quetta market, Mohammad Saleem, a resident of the city, said everyone was still in a state of shock.
Noor Ahmed, the hospital’s deputy chief surgeon for victims of violent crime, said they were treating about 50 wounded in the bombing. The motive behind the attack was unclear, but several lawyers have been targeted during a recent spate of killings in Quetta, the provincial capital of Baluchistan, which has a history of militant and separatist violence.
No group has immediately claimed responsibility for Monday’s attack. Mr Zahoor said the attacker hit shortly after Bilal’s body was brought in and that it seemed the two events were connected.
“Those who even did not spare the hospital and carried out the suicide attack can not be called humans”, Ashraf said.
Advertisement
Later Monday, the prime minister traveled to Quetta to meet the wounded and assess the situation. Sharif also asked health workers to provide the best treatment possible to those wounded in the attack.
