Election Commission appoints 15 expenditure observers in Punjab
Karachi, August 8
A Taliban suicide bomber killed at least 70 and wounded more than a 100 on Monday in an attack on mourners gathered at a hospital in Quetta in Pakistan’s restive southwestern Balochistan, head of the provincial health department said. The death toll is likely to climb.
The bomber struck more than 200 people — mostly lawyers — gathered at a government-run civil hospital in Quetta to mourn the death of a prominent lawyer who was shot dead earlier in the day.
A loud explosion and gunfire were heard from the emergency department where the lawyer’s body had been kept for autopsy.
Police claimed that a bomber had strapped on 8 kg of explosives.
Jamaat-ur-Ahrar, a faction of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, claimed the attack and warned of more “until the imposition of an Islamic system in Pakistan”.
Visuals of the incident on television showed panicked mourners running through debris as smoke filled the corridors of the hospital’s emergency ward.
“Today’s suicide attack appeared to target Kasi’s supporters,” Anwar ul Haq, a spokesman for the Balochistan government, said.
Ali Zafar, president of the Supreme Court Bar Association of Pakistan, told reporters in the eastern city of Lahore: “We (lawyers) have been targeted because we always raise our voice for people’s rights and for democracy…Lawyers will not just protest this attack but also prepare a long-term plan of action.”
Police cordoned off the hospital following the blast, with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Army Chief General Raheel Sharif paying visits to the wounded on Monday evening.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and President Mamnoon Hussain condemned the attack. “No one will be allowed to disrupt the peace of the province,” Sharif said.
Reports said two journalists were among the dead.
“This was a security lapse and I am having this personally investigated,” Balochistan Home Minister Sarfaraz Bugti said as he called it an “act of terrorism”.
In January, a suicide bomber killed 15 people outside a polio eradication centre in an attack claimed by both the Pakistani Taliban and Jundullah, another Islamist militant group that has pledged allegiance to Islamic State in the Middle East.
Monday’s attack was the worst in Pakistan since an Easter Day bombing ripped through a Lahore park, killing at least 72 people. Jamaat-ur-Ahrar also claimed responsibility for that atrocity.
Quetta has long been regarded as a base for the Afghan Taliban, whose leadership has regularly held meetings there in the past.
In May, Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour was killed by a US drone strike while travelling to Quetta from the Pakistan-Iran border.
