The bomber killed dozens of people and wounded many others in an attack that stru.
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Earlier, Pakistan’s powerful army chief Gen. Raheel Sharif also visited the hospital, and met with the wounded. The bomber killed dozens of people and wounded many others in an attack that struck a gathering of Pakistani. The lawyers gathered at the Quetta Civil Hospital to express their grief as is common with public figures.
Baluchistan, which borders Afghanistan, is home to many militant groups, most notably sectarian outfits who have launched a campaign of suicide bombings and assassinations of ethnic Hazaras – Persian-speaking Shi’ites who mostly emigrated from Afghanistan and are a small minority of the Shi’ite population in Sunni-majority Pakistan.
“The condition of the injured was very critical and they were given medical treatment but they could not survived”, doctors said.
Senior attorney Mohammad Ashraf stood with several fellow lawyers outside a Quetta court building, a spot where he had often gathered for breaks with numerous lawyers killed in the bombing. “We request that the government tracks down and punishes all those who killed innocent lawyers and other people”.
At a protest outside the Supreme Court in the capital Islamabad, Ashtar Ausaf Ali, Pakistan’s attorney general, called the attackers “weak and pathetic”.
The police stood guard yesterday at the Civil Hospital, where the bomb tore through a crowd of some 200 lawyers who had gathered there the previous day to mourn the fatal shooting of a colleague.
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.
Witnesses described horrifying scenes of bodies scattered on the ground and the wounded screaming out for help. It also claimed responsibility for Pakistan’s deadliest blast so far this year – the Lahore Easter bombing, which killed 75.
But in what was likely an opportunistic statement, the Islamic State group also claimed responsibility for the Quetta attack later on Monday.
It was not the first time that militants in Pakistan have targeted lawyers.
Baluchistan Bar Association president Mr Kasi was shot dead on his way to his office earlier in the day.
The project has been hit by numerous separatist attacks in the past but China has said it is confident the Pakistani military is in control.
Pointing out that Balochistan province has experienced more than 1,400 incidents of violence and targeted killing over the past 15 years, the statement urged the government of Pakistan to improve security measures. They emerged as powerful actors in 2007, when then-President Pervez Musharraf fired the chief justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry. Later, political parties joined the campaign and Musharraf was ultimately forced to resign in 2008 and Chaudhry was reinstated.
The Quetta hospital bombing was planned to inflict the maximum number of civilian casualties.
The brutality of such attacks have undercut militants’ support base, but they also underscore concerns that insurgents are still capable of striking in major cities, despite government claims of dismantling various terror networks.
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Sanaullah Zehri, the chief minister in Baluchistan province, where Quetta is the capital, says it seemed to be a suicide attack but that the police are still investing.
