65 killed in Easter blast
PAKISTAN: Bomber targets children, Christian families in popular park in Lahore
ISLAMABAD — A government spokesman says a bomb blast in a park in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore on Easter Sunday has killed 65 people and wounded 300.
The explosion took place near the children’s rides in Gulshan-eIqbal park — which was crowded with Christians celebrating Easter — local police chief Haider Ashraf said.
He said the explosion appeared to have been a suicide bombing, but investigations were ongoing.
A breakaway faction of the militant Taliban group in Pakistan has claimed responsibility. Ahsanullah Ahsan, spokesman for Jamaatul-Ahrar, told The Associated Press Sunday that a suicide bomber with the faction deliberately targeted the Christian community. He warned more attacks would follow.
“It was a soft target. Innocent women and children and visitors from other cities have been targeted,” Ashraf said. “Apparently, it seems like a suicide attack.”
Zaeem Qadri, a spokesman for the Punjab provincial government, said the wounded had been taken to six hospitals in Lahore.
Punjab’s chief minister Shahbaz Sharif announced three days of mourning and pledged to bring the perpetrators to justice, Qadri said.
The park was manned by police and private security guards, Ashraf said. “We are in a warlike situation and there is always a general threat but no specific threat alert was received for this place,” he added.
Footage broadcast on local television showed chaotic scenes in the park, with people running while carrying children and cradling the wounded in their laps.
A witness, not identified by name on Pakistan’s Geo TV station, said he was heading toward a fairground ride with his wife and two children when he heard a huge bang and all four of them were thrown to the floor. A woman was shown crying while looking desperately for her missing five-year-old son.
The explosion coincided with violence in other parts of the country as hundreds of protesters took to the streets to condemn the Feb. 29 execution of Mumtaz Qadri, who killed Salman Taseer, a governor who campaigned for changes in the country’s blasphemy laws, in January 2011.
Sunday was the 40th day since Qadri’s execution, a mourning observance called Chaliswan in Pakistan, and drew supporters into the streets of a number of cities.
Taseer had tried to soften Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, which he said were used to persecute religious minorities. But to many in Pakistan, the idea of altering blasphemy laws is itself criminal, and to his supporters Qadri has become a revered figure.