Lahore blast kills 72, injures 250

Lahore blast kills 72, injures 250: Pakistan Taliban claims credit for Easter attack

A suicide bomber who attacked a park thronging with families celebrating Easter killed at least 72 people in Pakistan, with children among the dead.

More than 200 people were hurt when explosives packed with ball bearings ripped through crowds near a children's play area in the park in Lahore, leaving dozens dead or bloodied.
Witnesses described children screaming as people carried the injured in their arms, while frantic relatives searched for loved ones.

"We had gone to the park to enjoy the Easter holiday. There was a blast suddenly, I saw a huge ball of fire and four to six people of my family are injured. Two of them critical," 53-year-old Arif Gill told AFP.

Pakistani police officers and rescue workers gather at the site of bomb explosion in a park in Lahore on Sunday. AP

"This is not an attack against Christians, everybody is victim, there are many Muslims among the victims, everybody goes to the park to enjoy," he added. "This is an attack against everybody."
Javed Ali, a 35-year-old who lives opposite the park near the centre of the city, said the force of Sunday's blast shattered the windows of his home.

"After 10 minutes I went outside. There was human flesh on the walls of our house. People were crying, I could hear ambulances," he said.

Many wounded children were taken to Lahore's Jinnah Hospital Monday, some clearly in pain as doctors examined injuries to their legs, arms and faces.

Doctors had described frenzied scenes at hospitals in the immediate aftermath of the attack, with staff treating casualties on floors and in corridors, as officials tweeted calls for blood donations.
Senior police official Haider Ashraf put the toll at 72 Monday, saying at least eight children were among the dead.

"Christians were not the specific target of this attack because the majority of the dead are Muslims," he said. "Everybody goes to this park."

Lahore's top administration official Muhammad Usman said 233 were wounded. Late Sunday rescue officials had put the number of injured at more than 300.

Earlier, Usman said the bomber "blew himself up near the kids' playing area where kids were on the swings".

Schools and other government institutions were open, but three days of mourning have been announced in Punjab province, of which Lahore is the capital, said commissioner Abdullah Sumbal.

'Hour of grief'
The Pakistani Taliban has claimed responsibility for a suicide attack that killed 72 people at a popular park in Lahore on Easter Sunday, saying it had targeted Christians.

"We carried out the Lahore attack as Christians are our target," Ehsanullah Ehsan, spokesman for Taliban faction Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, told AFP by telephone on Monday, adding that the group would carry out more attacks in the future, including on schools and colleges.

A military spokesman said intelligence agencies were chasing all leads.

Facebook activated its safety check system after the blast, so people could tell friends and relatives they were safe, but a glitch meant notifications were sent to people all over the world.

The company later apologised, but some users said the error meant news of the attack spread more quickly than it might otherwise have done.

Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif expressed his "grief and sorrow over the sad demise of innocent lives".

His Indian counterpart Narendra Modi telephoned to say "the people of India stand with their Pakistani brethren in this hour of grief," state media reported.

Powerful military chief General Raheel Sharif vowed to bring those responsible to justice and said he "will never allow these savage inhumans to over run our life and liberty", according to a military spokesman.

The US labelled the incident "cowardly", while Pakistan's Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai tweeted: "Pakistan and the world must unite. Every life is precious and must be respected and protected."

'Fanatical violence'
The Vatican condemned the attack, calling it "fanatical violence against Christian minorities," and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called for Islamabad to protect religious minorities.
Christians make up an estimated 1.6 percent of the Pakistan's 200 million people, the vast majority of which are Muslim, and have long faced discrimination.

Twin suicide attacks against churches in Lahore killed 17 people in March last year, sparking two days of rioting by thousands of Christians.

Attacks targeting children have a special resonance in Pakistan, still scarred by a Taliban assault in Peshawar in 2014 that killed 150 people, mostly children.

A military operation targeting insurgents was stepped up in response, and last year the death toll from militant attacks fell to its lowest since the Pakistani Taliban were formed in 2007.
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Modi tweeted from his PMO India account:
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf leader Imran Khan strongly condemned the blast. "Strongly condemn the terror attack in Lahore in which our innocent citizens including women & children lost their lives."

The US condemned as "cowardly" the suicide attack, vowing to work with Pakistan to defeat those sowing terror in the country.

"The United States condemns in the strongest terms today's appalling terrorist attack in Lahore, Pakistan," National Security Council spokesman Ned Price said in a White House statement.

British Prime Minister David Cameron also expressed shock over the deadly attack and expressed his desire to give all possible support in the hour of grief.

Cameron tweeted:
Pakistan, a nuclear-armed nation of 190 million people, is plagued by a Taliban insurgency, criminal gangs and sectarian violence. Punjab is its biggest and wealthiest province but has traditionally been more peaceful than other parts of Pakistan.

Pakistanis hunt militants behind blast that killed at least 70

Pakistani authorities hunted on Monday for breakaway Taliban militants who once declared loyalty to Islamic State after the group claimed responsibility for an Easter suicide bomb targeting Christians, that killed at least 70 people.

The attack on Sunday evening in a busy park in the eastern city of Lahore, the powerbase of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, killed mostly women and children enjoying an Easter weekend outing. 

Pakistan is a majority-Muslim state but has a Christian population of more than 2 million.

It was the deadliest attack in Pakistan since the December 2014 massacre of 134 school children at a military run academy in the city of Peshawar that prompted a big government crackdown on Islamist militancy.

"We must bring the killers of our innocent brothers, sisters and children to justice and will never allow these savage inhumans to over-run our life and liberty," military spokesman Asim Bajwa said in a post on Twitter.

Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a faction of the Pakistani Taliban, claimed responsibility for the attack late on Sunday night, and issued a direct challenge to the government.

"The target was Christians," said a faction spokesman, Ehsanullah Ehsan, said. "We want to send this message to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif that we have entered Lahore."

Lahore is the capital of Pakistan's richest province, Punjab, and is seen as the country's political and cultural heartland.

Sharif's office condemned the blast as a cowardly act and said a response had been ordered, without elaborating.

Lahore, markets, schools and courts were closed on Monday as the city mourned.

Rescue services spokeswoman Deeba Shahnaz said at least 70 people were killed and about 340 were wounded, with 25 in serious condition.

The group has claimed responsibility for several big attacks after it split with the main Pakistani Taliban in 2014.

It declared allegiance to the Islamic State but later said it was rejoining the Pakistani Taliban insurgency.

TARGETS

Pakistan has been plagued by militant violence for the last 15 years, since it joined a U.S.-led campaign against Islamist militancy after the Sept. 11, 2001, al Qaeda attacks on the United States.
While the army, police, government and Western interests have been the prime targets of the Pakistani Taliban and their allies, Christians and other religious minorities have also attacked.
Nearly 80 people were killed in a suicide bomb attack on a church in the northwestern city of Peshawar in 2013.

The security forces have killed and arrested hundreds of suspected militants under the crackdown launched after the 2014 Peshawar school massacre.

Militant violence had eased but they retain the ability to launch devastating attacks.

Pakistan's security agencies have long been accused of nurturing militants to use for help in pursuing security objectives in Afghanistan and against old rival India.

But some, like the Pakistani Taliban, have turned against the state. They are fighting to topple the government and install a strict interpretation of Islamic law.

Sharif's opponents have accused him of tolerating militancy in return for peace in his province, a charge he strongly denies.

Earlier on Sunday, hundreds of hard-line Muslim activists clashed with police in the capital, Islamabad, in a protest over the execution of a man they consider a hero for assassinating a governor over his criticism of harsh blasphemy laws.

Bodyguard Mumtaz Qadri Mumtaz shot dead Punjab governor Salman Taseer in 2011. Taseer, a prominent liberal politician, had spoken in support of a Christian woman sentenced to death under the law that mandates capital punishment for insulting Islam or the Prophet Mohammad. Qadri was executed last month.

There was no indication of a connection between the protest in Islamabad and the bomb in Lahore.
(Reporting by Asad Hashim; Writing by Robert Birsel and Kay Johnson.; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)