The US State Department last week designated JuA a terrorist group, calling it “a splinter group of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) based in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region”.
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The military has since been deployed in and around the city’s hospitals. “People are scared and they ask for how long the violence will continue”, he said. “Lawyers will not just protest this attack but also prepare a long-term plan of action”.
The Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) and the Pakistan Bar Council (PBC) said its lawyers would be boycotting court proceedings, and observing a week of mourning.
_Jan. 10: Bombing in Shiite area of southern city of Quetta kills 81 people. Neither claim could be independently verified. At least 18 of those who died in the hospital attack were members of Quetta’s legal profession, officials said.
He says most of the victims of the bombing are lawyers.
Shops, businesses, schools and universities in the city and several other towns in the southern province of Baluchistan remained closed as the government announced three days of mourning.
_Aug. 16: A suicide bombing at the home of Punjab province’s home minister Shuja Khanzada kills 18 people, including the minister and a senior police officer.
Deploring the “utter failure” of the federal and provincial governments in maintaining law and order in Balochistan, the PBC has demanded immediate arrest of those responsible for the heinous attack and that they be brought to justice as soon as possible.
Waliur Rehman says he was taking his ailing father to the hospital’s emergency ward when the explosion shook the building on Monday. Pervez Masi, who was injured by pieces of flying glass, said the blast was so powerful that “we didn’t know what had happened”.
Video footage showed bodies strewn on the ground, some still smoking, among pools of blood and shattered glass as shocked survivors cried and comforted one another.
-Nov. 5: A suicide bomber strikes a Sunni mosque in Darra Adam Khel in northwestern Pakistan, killing at least 67 during Friday prayers.
-Nov. 22: A Taliban suicide bomber struck a Shiite Muslim procession in the city of Rawalpindi, near Pakistan’s capital, killing 23 people. Army chief Raheel Sharif visited the injured in the Civil Hospital.
JuA, formed in 2014, also claimed responsibility for Pakistan’s deadliest blast so far this year – the Lahore Easter bombing, which killed 75 – among other attacks.
He described the attack as an “act of terrorism”.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and President Mamnoon Hussain strongly condemned the attack.
Sharif added that “no one will be allowed to disturb the peace”, which “countless sacrifices” by the “security forces, police and the people of Baluchistan” have worked so hard to restore. Afridi said the attacker hit shortly after Kasi’s body was brought in and that it seemed the two events were connected. There have been instances of competing claims in previous attacks in Pakistan. The twin attacks killed at least 70 people, a lot of them lawyers, authorities said.
Khan says dozens of lawyers and journalists were present inside the hospital when the bomb went off.
Anwalullah Kakar, the government spokesman in southwestern Baluchistan province, says an investigation is underway.
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Kasi was shot and killed by gunmen earlier on Monday as he was on his way to his office.
