Pakistan suffers mass murder of lawyers, death total is 63 so far

Guardian:
Dozens of people have been killed and injured in a suicide bomb attack in the grounds of a government-run hospital in the south-western Pakistani city of Quetta.

The blast happened shortly after the body of Bilal Kasi, a prominent lawyer who was killed in a shooting earlier in the day, was brought to the hospital. It was unclear if the two events were connected.

Nearly 100 lawyers and other people had gathered at the hospital, and witnesses described horrifying scenes of bodies being scattered about and the wounded screaming out and crying for help. The death toll had risen to 63 by 4.05pm (11.05am GMT), according to hospital director Abdul Rehman, who also said 92 wounded people were being treated.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast, which struck at the gates of the building housing the emergency ward. Earlier, police mistakenly said the bomb struck the hospital’s main gate.

Riaz Ahmed, a 74-year-old lawyer, had gone to the hospital with an assistant and his nephew to find out what had happened to Kasi when the blast occurred.

“I was near a wall and I fell down,” he said. “The wall protected me. My assistant and my nephew are injured and being treated. It was a miracle that I survived.

“There was chaos after the blast, with body parts lying everywhere. It is hard to recognise the victims. Many of the injured are quite critical. Most of the dead are prominent lawyers.”

Another lawyer, Jameel Ahmed, 48, said he headed for the hospital as soon as he heard that Kasi, a friend, had been shot dead.

“I heard a loud blast, then a colleague of mine called me from hospital,” he said. “I have lost so many friends in a single attack. This is horrific. Many of those who have died were with me last night. We had dinner together and now they are all dead.

“I think the terrorists planned it so – they knew that lawyers would gather in large numbers at the hospital after the killing of Kasi, and so they sent a bomber to attack.”
...
Another day another war crime in Pakistan.   It is another way of demonstrating that even the powerful are not immune from mass murder attacks as practiced by Islamic extremists.

This was a simple plot.  Attack a prominent lawyer and then send a  human bomb attacker to kill those coming to see the first victim.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t
Read more

Bin Laden's concern about Zarqawi's remains

James Robbins: ... Bin Laden suggests that President Bush should allow Zarqawi’s body to be returned to his family in Jordan, but this is a matter that is up to the Jordanian government, which so far has not shown much interest in facilitating a homecoming. Bin Laden mocks King Abdullah II, calling him a Coalition minion, and asking “w hat scares you about Abu Musab after he’s dead? You know that his funeral, if allowed to happen, would be a huge funeral showing the extent of sympathy with the mujahedin.” A large crowd would definitely turn out, though most people would be on hand to demonstrate their anger and disgust. Last November’s hotel bombings in Amman , masterminded by Zarqawi, are still fresh in people’s memory, and mentioning them to Jordanians has the same visceral impact as memory of the 9/11 attacks does here. Jordan has adopted a zero-tolerance policy towards those who choose to mourn the country’s least favorite son, and four opposition members of parliament who paid con
Read more