Over 70 killed in ISIS suicide attack in Pakistan
Islamic State has claimed responsibility for a bomb blast that killed at least 70 people and injured about 150 at a crowded shrine in southern Pakistan on Thursday.
Officials said a suicide bomber detonated the bomb among crowds gathered for the busiest day of the week at the shrine to Sufi saint Lal Shahbaz Qalandar in Sehwan, a town in Sindh province.
Amaq, a news agency affiliated to Isis, claimed the jihadi group had carried out the attack, which was the deadliest in Pakistan so far this year. It was also the latest such attack on devotees of Sufism, a mystical and generally moderate form of Islam despised by radical fundamentalists.
“The explosion took place when a large number of people were inside the shrine boundary,” a local police officer said. “A huge number of people come to the shrine every Thursday to take part in ritual dances and prayers. It is not possible to ensure the security of every person coming and going.”
Sughra Bibi, a 45-year-old woman rushed to hospital with shrapnel wounds in her stomach, said she was near the front of the crowd watching the devotional dancing when the explosion occurred. “The terrorists are targeting us just because they hate our shrines,” she said. “They attacked another shrine a couple of months ago. But we will never give up our faith.”
Tanveer Ali, a local man whose wife and son were injured, said those responsible had sinned against Islam by targeting civilians. “The terrorists will have to answer for this on the day of judgment,” he said.
Another witness, Raja Somro, inside the shrine at the time of the attack, told a local television network that hundreds of people were performing their spiritual dance called dhamal when the attacker struck at the shrine. “I saw bodies everywhere. I saw bodies of women and children,” he said. Local television channels aired footage of worshippers crying for the help after the blast.
A senior police officer said at least 72 people had been killed and more than 150 injured, adding that the death toll was likely to rise.
Emergency services in Sehwan are basic. Muheen Ahmed, the medical superintendent at the local hospital, said it lacked the necessary beds to cope with the incident and that some people had been sent to Hyderabad, 90 miles away.
Pakistan has seen a rise in terrorist attacks in recent days, including an attack on peaceful protesters in the heart of Lahore, a bombing in Quetta that killed two police officers and an explosion in the frontier city of Peshawar.
Pakistan’s prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, issued a statement saying an attack on Sufis was considered a “direct threat”.
A state-run television station quoted the prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, as saying that the country’s military and other security forces would use all their resources to track down and arrest the culprits. The military chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa appealed for calm, telling Pakistanis: “Your security forces shall not allow hostile powers to succeed.”
But, in a strongly worded statement, he vowed: “Each drop of the nation’s blood shall be revenged, and revenged immediately. No more restraint for anyone.”
The army spokesman Maj Gen Asif Ghafoor said acts of terrorism were being carried out “from hostile powers and from sanctuaries in Afghanistan”. Without providing any further details, he said: “We shall defend and respond.”
He said Pakistan’s armed forces would use their resources to transport the wounded to nearby hospitals and that the air force would send a plane to airlift the wounded from Sehwan and other areas.
Pakistani officials say the surge in attacks is the responsibility of groups based over the border in Afghanistan.
On Wednesday, Islamabad lodged a formal complaint by summoning an Afghan diplomat to the Pakistani foreign office. As a security precaution, principal Sufi pilgrimage sites in Karachi and Lahore were closed after the attack.
Isis has claimed a handful of previous attacks in Pakistan, including one on a Sufi shrine in November in Balochistan province. The militant group is not thought to have an extensive organisation in Pakistan, but has forged close ties with local terror franchises including a faction of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a long-established Sunni sectarian outfit.
Isis also claimed responsibility for a deadly attack on police cadets in the city of Quetta last year, thought to have been a joint operation with various jihadi groups.
Two suicide bombings in north western Pakistan also killed six people, following an almost three-month-long lull in the volatile region. A breakaway Taliban faction claimed responsibility for one of the attacks, according to Associated Press.
Pakistan has waged several offensives against militants in recent years, including a big operation that started in mid-2014 in the last key insurgent sanctuary of North Waziristan. Pakistan declared the offensive a success, saying it had uprooted militants, killed hundreds and forced many to flee across the border into Afghanistan.
Source: The Guardian
