Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif flew to Quetta after the attack, and said “all state security institutions must respond with full might to decimate these terrorists”. The bomber killed dozens of people and wounded.
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Journalists in Lahore hold candles during a rally to pay tribute to their colleagues who were killed in Monday’s suicide bombing in Quetta.
Pakistani lawyers are mourning colleagues slain in a shocking suicide bombing the previous day in the southwestern city of Quetta that killed 70 people, mostly lawyers.
Pakistani militants struck at the heart of the country’s legal profession on Monday, killing a prominent attorney and then bombing the hospital where dozens of other lawyers had gathered to mourn.
In a message the Vatican said was sent to church and civil authorities in Pakistan, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state, said the pope offered his “heartfelt condolences to the relatives of the deceased, to the authorities and to the entire nation”. Shops were shuttered, and markets and schools closed to mourn those killed. Pakistan deployed extra police units outside court building. “We request that the government tracks down and punishes all those who killed innocent lawyers and other people”, he added.
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. Almost 100 lawyers had come to the hospital in the heart of Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province, to express their grief after the body of their colleague, prominent attorney Bilal Kasi, was taken there.
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton on Monday condemned the “despicable” terror attack at a hospital in Pakistan’s restive balochistan province, saying there was a need to stand up against terror and prevent such assaults.
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.
“Lawyers and journalists are targeted like this”.
It is the second major attack in Pakistan claimed by the group after last year’s shooting of 44 people in the minority Ismaili community in the southern city of Karachi.
Later on Monday a part of the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the massacre, an organization known as Jamaat-ul-Ahrar.
“The claim of responsibility by Jamaat-ur-Ahrar is more credible”, said Muhammad Amir Rana, head of the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies.
It was not the first time that militants in Pakistan have targeted lawyers.
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A stampede broke out after the bombing, causing chaos at the hospital, officials and witnesses said.
