Shaken lawyers begin boycott as Pakistan mourns massacre victims
PAKISTAN’S lawyers boycotted courts and staged protests nationwide yesterday after a horrific suicide bombing at a hospital in Quetta which killed 70 people, including many of their colleagues.
Monday’s bloodletting, with medics battling to save the injured amid scenes of carnage, left the southwestern city, referred to as the fruit garden, reeling.
Streets were largely empty in Quetta yesterday as most public transport shut down, with markets and schools closed in mourning.
Police stood guard at the site of the blast at the Civil Hospital.
The explosion came as about 200 lawyers along with journalists gathered at the hospital after the fatal shooting of a top provincial lawyer.
The attack has been claimed by both a Pakistani Taliban faction called Jamaat-ul-Ahrar (JuA), and the Islamic State group (IS).
Neither claim has been verified by Pakistan’s authorities.
If IS were behind the attack, it would be its deadliest so far in Pakistan, where the group has struggled to get a foothold.
The Pakistan Bar Council said before the block that lawyers throughout the country would take part.
Demonstrations were being held in other major cities, including Islamabad and Karachi.
Funerals have already been held for many of the victims. Officials have put the number of wounded at 112.
JuA, formed in 2014, also claimed responsibility for Pakistan’s deadliest blast so far this year – the Lahore Easter bombing, which killed 75 – among other attacks.
The US State Department last week designated JuA a terrorist group, calling it a splinter group of the Tehreek-eTaliban Pakistan (TTP) based in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region.
Hours after the JuA claim, IS also claimed responsibility for the attack and said it had killed 200 people, the IS-linked Amaq news agency said. The figure is believed to be exaggerated.
Attacks claimed by IS in Pakistan are rare, the most significant being a bus assault in Karachi that killed 44 people last year.
But officials denied that it marked a turning point for IS in Pakistan.
Senior analyst Rahimullah Yousafzai poured doubt on both claims to the Quetta bombing, saying there was little evidence of JuA or IS being active in Balochistan province.
But he said suicide bombers could strike anywhere, so “we cannot rule it out”.
The security situation in Balochistan is already murky and confused.
The province, which borders Iran and Afghanistan, has major oil and gas resources, but is afflicted by Islamist militancy and sectarian violence.
Pakistan’s army said the attack was specially targeting CPEC, referring to China’s ambitious $46-billion (R620-billion) infrastructure project linking its western province of Xinjiang to the Arabian Sea via Pakistan. – AFP