Taliban group claims responsibility for 70 deaths

Associated Press

QUETTA, PAKISTAN

Pakistani militants struck at the heart of the country’s legal profession Monday, killing a prominent attorney and then bombing the hospital where dozens of other lawyers had gathered to mourn. The twin attacks killed at least 70 people, most of them lawyers, authorities said.

A breakaway faction of the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attacks in Quetta, the capital of restive Baluchistan province, which also wounded dozens of others.

In a statement, Ahsanullah Ahsan, spokesman for the Jamaat-ul-Ahrar militant group, said its fighters killed Bilal Kasi, the president of the Baluchistan Bar Association, then as dozens of lawyers gathered at the government-run Civil Hospital, a suicide bomber targeted the mourners.

Jamaat-ul-Ahrar has been behind several attacks in Pakistan in recent years, including a deadly March bombing on Easter Sunday in the eastern city of Lahore that killed at least 70 people.

Ninety-two people were wounded in the explosion at the hospital, according to Civil Hospital director Abdul Rehman. Two journalists working for Pakistani news channels were among those killed in the attack, according to Shahzada Zulfiqar, the president of the Quetta Press Club.

Ali Zafar, the head of the country’s main lawyers’ association, condemned the blast as “an attack on justice.” He said lawyers would observe three days of mourning.

In Washington, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau condemned the targeting of “a hospital, as well as the judiciary and the media, two of the most important pillars of every democracy,” and vowed to work with Pakistan to combat the threat of terrorism.