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Pakistan lawyers protest as city mourns bomb victims

Local police said that most of the victims were buried on Monday while dead bodies of those belonged to far flung areas were sent to their homes to be buried at their native places.

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Islamic State and a faction of Taliban has claimed responsibility of the attack that occurred in a hospital in the city of Quetta in Pakistan on Monday leaving around 70 dead and over 110 injured.

“Lawyers throughout the country will boycott court proceedings on Tuesday in protest against the killing of lawyers in Quetta yesterday”, the Pakistan Bar Council said in a statement on Tuesday, adding provincial and district bar councils would join the strike.

The bomber struck as more than 100 mourners, mostly lawyers and journalists, crowded into the emergency department to accompany the body of a prominent lawyer who had been shot and killed in the city earlier in the day, Faridullah, a journalist who was among the wounded, told Reuters.

Pakistan’s national flag flew at half-mast as the government announced a national mourning. Two groups have already claimed responsibility for the frightful attack: ISIS and Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a splinter group of the Pakistani Taliban.

The Islamic State group also later issued its own claim of responsibility for the hospital bombing.

In a statement, Ahsanullah Ahsan, spokesman for the Jamaat-ul-Ahrar militant group, said its fighters killed Mr Kasi and also dozens of lawyers gathered at the government-run Civil Hospital to mourn for their colleague.

The bomb disposal squad said that steel ball bearings were used in the explosive vest which was detonated by the suicide bomber.

In Quetta, businesses remained shut to mourn the victims.

While Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif expressed his “deep grief and anguish” over the killing, lawyers and journalists held protest demonstrations across several cities. “We have to stand up against terror and come together to prevent these attacks”, Clinton said in a tweet.

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This attack was the deadliest in a string of recent attacks against lawyers in Pakistan.

At least 63 dead in Pakistan hospital blast