Pakistan raises death toll to more than 70 in Quetta blast

Police officials said the bomb went off shortly after the body of a prominent lawyer killed earlier in the day was brought to the hospital.

Pakistani relatives mourn next to bodies of victims after a bomb explosion at a government hospital premises in Quetta. Banaras Khan / AFP

Quetta, Pakistan // At least 70 people were killed on Monday when a Taliban suicide bomb packed with ball bearings tore through a Pakistani hospital.

Witnesses described tearful staff rushing towards the smoking blast site to help the wounded.

The bomber struck a crowd of some 200 people gathered at the Civil Hospital in the Balochistan provincial capital Quetta after the fatal shooting of a senior local lawyer earlier in the day.

More than 100 were wounded, officials said.

Video footage showed bodies strewn on the ground among pools of blood and shattered glass as shocked survivors cried and comforted one another.

Many of the victims were clad in the black suits and ties traditionally worn by Pakistani lawyers.

One of the survivors described a horrifying scene, saying there were “bodies everywhere.” Waliur Rehman said he was taking his ailing father to the emergency ward when the explosion shook the building, knocking them both to the ground.

Another witness, lawyer Abdul Latif, said he arrived at the hospital to express his grief over the lawyer’s killing. But he said he didn’t know he would “see the bodies of dozens of other lawyers” killed and wounded shortly after arriving.

An AFP journalist who was about 20 metres away when the bomb went off said nurses and lawyers wept as medics from inside the hospital rushed out to help dozens of injured

“People were beating their heads, crying and mourning. They were in shock and grief.”

Police confirmed the attack was a suicide blast.

“The bomber had strapped some eight kilograms of explosives packed with ball bearings and shrapnel on his body,” bomb disposal unit chief Abdul Razzaq said.

A faction of the Pakistani Taliban, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, claimed responsibility for the blast, with a spokesman vowing more attacks.

Jamaat-ul-Ahrar has also said it was behind the deadliest attack in Pakistan so far this year, a bombing in a crowded Lahore park that killed 75 people on Easter Sunday.

Officials said mobile phone jammers had been activated around hospitals in the area — a regular precaution after an attack — making it hard to contact officers on the ground to get updated information.

The crowd, mainly lawyers and journalists, had gone to the hospital after the death of the president of the Balochistan Bar Association in a shooting earlier on Monday, said provincial home secretary Akbar Harifal.

Bilal Anwar Kasi was targeted by two unidentified gunmen as he left his home for work.

Pakistan is grimly accustomed to atrocities after a decade-long insurgency.

A military operation targeting insurgents was stepped up in 2015 and saw the death toll from militant attacks fall to its lowest since the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), of which Jamaat-ul-Ahrar is a part, was formed in 2007.

But analysts have warned the group is still able to carry out major attacks.

Jamaat-ul-Ahrar has also claimed responsibility for other suicide blasts, attacks on teams carrying out polio vaccinations.

The faction taunted prime minister Nawaz Sharif over Twitter after the Easter blast.

Balochistan, which borders Iran and Afghanistan, has major oil and gas resources but is afflicted by extremist militancy, sectarian violence and a separatist insurgency.

Mr Sharif condemned the attack and ordered authorities to tighten security.

The European Union also condemned it, saying in a statement that there was “no justification for such acts of terrorism”, and Facebook activated its safety check for Quetta.

Pakistani hospitals have been targeted by militants before, with a bomb killing 13 at a Karachi hospital in 2010.

*Agence France-Presse and Associated Press