Pakistan lawyers strike as dazed city mourns bomb victims

Pakistan’s lawyers boycotted courts and staged protests nationwide Tuesday after a horrific suicide bombing at a Quetta hospital which killed 72 people including many of their colleagues.

Monday’s bloodletting, with medics battling to save scores of injured amid scenes of carnage, left the southwestern city reeling.

Police stood guard Tuesday at the Civil Hospital, where the bomb tore through a crowd of some 200 lawyers who had gathered there the previous day to mourn the fatal shooting of a colleague.

Officials said Tuesday the death toll had increased to 72, with more than 100 injured.

Both the Pakistani Taliban and the Islamic State group have asserted responsibility for the attack, though neither claim has been verified by Pakistani authorities.

The IS claim, if true, would make it the group’s deadliest attack so far in Pakistan, where it has struggled for purchase.

Scores of lawyers held rallies in major cities including Islamabad, Karachi and Quetta Tuesday.

“It’s very tragic. Our seniors who were our intellectuals have been killed and may God reward them in heaven,” lawyer Ghulam Muhammad told AFP in Quetta.

Soldiers patrolled near-empty streets in the city as most public transport shut down, with markets and schools closed in mourning.

In Islamabad and in Karachi, lawyers called for the authorities to protect civilians.

“This is not time only for weeping and crying and for lamenting, this is a time for practical steps,” said Sheikh Asmuddin in the capital.

Pope Francis said he was “deeply saddened” by the attack, joining a chorus of international condemnation.

Competing claims –
The Pakistani Taliban faction that claimed the attack, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar (JuA), was formed in 2014. It also claimed responsibility for Pakistan’s deadliest blast so far this year — the Lahore Easter bombing, which killed 75.

The US State Department last week designated JuA a terrorist group, calling it “a splinter group of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP)”.

Hours after the JuA announcement the Islamic State group also claimed the attack.