A faction of the Pakistani Taliban, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, claimed responsibility for Monday’s suicide attack on a hospital in Quetta, Balochistan that killed at least 70 people and injured over 100.
A spokesperson of Jamaat-ul-Ahrar has vowed to carry out more attacks “until the imposition of an Islamic system in Pakistan”. The group had also claimed the attack on a crowded Lahore park that killed 75 people on Easter Sunday.
“The death toll has risen to 70 and there are 112 injured,” the head of the provincial health department, Dr Masood Nausherwani, told reporters on Monday.
Officials said mobile phone jammers had been activated around hospitals in the area — a regular precaution after an attack — making it hard to contact officers on the ground to get updated information.
The crowd, mainly lawyers and journalists, had gone to the hospital after the death of the president of the Balochistan Bar Association in a shooting earlier on Monday, said provincial Home Secretary Akbar Harifal.
Bilal Anwar Kasi was targeted by two unidentified gunmen as he left his home for work.
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.” Pakistan is grimly accustomed to atrocities after a nearly decade-long insurgency. A military operation targeting insurgents was stepped up in 2015 and saw the death toll from militant attacks fall to its lowest since the umbrella Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), of which Jamaat-ul-Ahrar is a part, was formed in 2007.
But analysts have warned the group is still able to carry out major attacks. Balochistan, which borders Iran and Afghanistan, has major oil and gas resources but is afflicted by Islamist militancy, sectarian violence between Sunni and Shia Muslims and a separatist insurgency.
Prime Minister Sharif condemned the attack and ordered authorities to tighten security.
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 U.S. drone strike while travelling to Quetta from the Pakistan-Iran border.
