Lahore bombing: Pakistan mourns as death toll rises

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Lahore bombing: Pakistan mourns as death toll rises

5:57 CAT | 28 Mar 2016

Al Jazeera

Families of the victims killed in a massive suicide bombing targeting Pakistani Christians in Lahore have started burying their relatives as a nationwide three-day mourning period began.

The funerals on Monday followed the attack at a park in Pakistan’s second largest city a day earlier, aimed at killing members of the Christian minority gathered on Easter Sunday.

At least 70 people were killed, with many having succumbed to their wounds on Monday. Hundreds were also wounded, officials said. Most victims were women and children.

The bombing was claimed by a breakaway Taliban faction, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, that has before publicly supported the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group.

Even though Sunday’s bombing targeted mainly Christians, most of those killed in Lahore were Muslims, who were also in the park on Easter Sunday.

Of the dead, at least 14 have been identified as Christians, according to Lahore Police Superintendent Mohammed Iqbal. Another 12 bodies have not yet been identified, he said.

In response, Pakistan says it will launch a special paramilitary crackdown in Punjab, the country’s richest and most populous province.

The offensive would give paramilitary Rangers extraordinary powers to conduct raids and interrogate suspects similar to those the Rangers have used for more than two years in the southern city of Karachi, a senior security official based in Lahore told the Reuters news agency, on the condition of anonymity.

‘No security’

The suicide bomber detonated himself just metres away from children’s rides in the Gulshan-i-Iqbal park, or Garden of Iqbal, of Allama Iqbal Town. The park is named after Sir Muhammed Iqbal, a prominent Pakistani poet and philosopher who died in Lahore in 1938.

Sahil Pervez, 11, was among those killed.

His uncle Aftab Gil, speaking at the child’s funeral, said: “The government of Punjab had no security arrangements for the parks or even today here in this church.

“If they deploy some security they are so lazy, so now this is our request from our government and especially from the prime minister, who he should take personal interest to finish this terrorism in this country.”

The bombing marked Pakistan’s deadliest attack since the December 2014 massacre of more than 130 school children at a military-run academy in the city of Peshawar that prompted a big government crackdown on hardline groups.

Source: Al Jazeera