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.
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The United States has said it will stand with Pakistan in its fight against terrorism, and strongly condemned the bomb blast in Quetta that killed dozens of people.
“A martyr from the Islamic State [of Iraq and the Levant] detonated his explosive belt at a gathering of justice ministry employees and Pakistani policemen in the city of Quetta”, the armed group’s Amaq news agency reported. Among the dead is former President of Quetta Bar Association Baz Mohammad Kakar. Journalists and television cameramen covering the lawyers’ rally were also among those killed and wounded.
Almost 200 lawyers were being treated at different hospitals in the city, Iqbal said, some with critical injuries.
“It was a suicide attack”, said the police official, Zahoor Ahmed Afridi.
The explosion severely damaged the casualty ward at the hospital, requiring the people injured in the blast to be transferred to neighboring hospitals for treatment. But he said he didn’t know he would “see the bodies of dozens of other lawyers” killed and wounded shortly after arriving.
A spokesman for Jamaatul Ahara, a faction of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, said that his faction “accepts responsibility” for the attack in the southwestern city of Quetta and vowed more attacks “until the imposition of an Islamic system in Pakistan”.
Video footage showed bodies strewn on the ground among pools of blood and shattered glass as shocked survivors cried and tried to comfort one another.
“Most of the victims are lawyers, journalists and common citizens”, Abdul says.
The attack took place in the country’s western Baluchistan province, which shares a border with Afghanistan and has been plagued by terrorist violence in the past.
“Lawyers will not just protest this attack, but also prepare a long-term plan of action”, he added.
The Malir Bar Association also staged at sit-in on the National Highway to condemn the bombing.
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“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 Baluchistan”, a statement from the PM House quoted the Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif. Gen. Raheel Sharif, the powerful army chief of Pakistan, visited the Quetta Civil Hospital, and met with the wounded.
