Pakistanis mourn lawyers after deadly attack
Blast that killed 70 continues militant groups’ cultural war
QUETTA, Pakistan — Many Pakistanis were in deep mourning on Tuesday, a day after a suicide bombing that targeted lawyers killed 70 people in the city of Quetta, touching a chord in the country’s long-simmering culture war. By targeting lawyers, Islamic radicals appeared to take aim at a pillar of the country’s budding civil society — and a symbol of the supremacy of secular law in a modern state.
Across the country, many courts were closed and lawyers staged rallies in support of their colleagues.
But in Quetta, the capital of the southwestern province of Baluchistan, the streets were deserted. Shops were shuttered, and markets and schools closed to mourn those killed. “People are scared, and they ask, ‘For how long the violence will continue?’ ” said Mohammad Saleem, who works at the market.
Senior attorney Mohammad Ashraf stood with several fellow lawyers outside a Quetta court building, a spot where he had often gathered for breaks with many of the lawyers killed in the bombing. The perpetrators “cannot be called humans,” he said with anger. “We request that the government tracks down and punishes all those who killed innocent lawyers and other people,” he added.
Tariq Lodhi, a former head of Pakistan’s main civil spy agency, said that the attack was carried out by militants to “terrorize lawyers and judges,” who are handling cases involving militants accused of carrying out attacks in the country.
A prominent local lawyer, Bilal Kasi, the president of the Baluchistan Bar Association, was on his way to work when he was shot dead by gunmen early Monday. After his death, around 100 lawyers gathered at Quetta’s government-run Civil Hospital, where a suicide bomber attacked those mourning.
Two journalists who had been covering the event for Pakistani TV were killed, but many of the dead and wounded were lawyers.
In a statement, Ahsanullah Ahsan, a spokesman for the Jamaat-ul-Ahrar — a breakaway faction of the militant Taliban group — said its fighters killed Kasi and the lawyers at the hospital.
But in what was likely an opportunistic statement, ISIS also claimed responsibility for the Quetta attack later on Monday. There have been instances of competing claims in previous attacks in Pakistan.