On August 8, 2013, gunmen shot dead a police official in Quetta, and a suicide blast at the funeral claimed the lives of almost 30 people, including several police officials.
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The Islamic State claims it was responsible for a suicide bombing that killed at least 70 people at a hospital in Pakistan.
In the wake of the Quetta attack, which killed more than 70 people, injured over 112, the lawyers all over the country have staged a protest on Tuesday (today).
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.
Pervez Masi, who was injured by pieces of flying glass, said the blast was so powerful that “we didn’t know what had happened”. It said that “a martyr from the Islamic State detonated his explosive belt at a gathering of justice ministry employees and Pakistani policemen in the city of Quetta”.
Targeted killings have become increasingly common in Quetta, the capital of a province that has seen rising violence linked to a separatist insurgency as well as sectarian tensions and rising crime. 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.
The US State Department designated JuA as a terrorist group last week in a statement that described it as “a splinter group of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) based in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region”. Jamaat-ur-Ahrar also claimed responsibility for the bombing. At least seventy were killed and around 200 were injured in one of the bloodiest attacks in Pakistan since March 2016.
“How weak and pathetic are these people who target hospitals, where women and children, where patients, go to get treatment?”.
In a statement, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif condemned the suicide bombing.
Anwalullah Kakar, the government spokesman in southwestern Baluchistan province, says an investigation is underway.
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The BBC reported that Kasi had spoken out against recent attacks in the province of Baluchistan, including the targeted killing of lawyers, and he had announced a two-day strike this week by lawyers who would refuse to appear in court in protest.
