Taliban suicide bomber kills 65 at packed Lahore park

More than 200 also injured, including many children and women, when blast ripped through the parking area of a crowded park where Christians were celebrating Easter Sunday.

Women comfort each other as they mourn over the death of a family member in a Taliban suicide bombing in Lahore on March 27, 2016. K M Chuadary / AP Photo

Lahore // At least 72 people were killed and more than 200 injured when the blast from a Taliban suicide bomber ripped through the parking area of a crowded park in the Pakistani city of Lahore where Christians were celebrating Easter Sunday.

Dozens of ambulances raced to the Gulshan-i-Iqbal park, near the centre of the city, with many women and children among the dead and wounded.

The Taliban faction Jamaat Ul Ahrar said they carried out the attack to target Pakistan’s Christian minority.

Lahore top administration official Muhammad Usman said the toll had reached 65 people. “The rescue operation is continuing,” he said, adding that more than 50 children were among the injured.

The army was called in, he said, and soldiers were at the scene helping with rescue operations and security.

Senior police official Haider Ashraf said the blast appeared to be a suicide attack, adding that ball bearings were found at the park.

A medical superintendent at Jinnah Hospital said the number of injured stands at more than 200 people, most of them are in critical.

“I fear the death toll will rise,” he added.

He described a nightmarish scene at the hospital, with staff treating casualties on floors and in corridors.

Provincial health adviser Khawaja Salman Rafique said the authorities were asking citizens to donate blood.

Javed Ali, a 35-year-old resident who lives opposite park, said the force of the blast had shattered his home’s windows.

“Everything was shaking, there were cries and dust everywhere.

“After ten minutes I went outside. There was human flesh on the walls of our house. People were crying, I could hear ambulances.”

He added: “It was overcrowded because of Easter, there were a lot of Christians there. It was so crowded I told my family not to go.”

Pakistan has been battling a home-grown extremist insurgency since 2004, with groups such as the Pakistani Taliban routinely carrying out attacks as part of their struggle to overthrow the government.

But Lahore, Pakistan’s cultural capital of eight million people on the country’s border with India, has been relatively peaceful in recent years.

The blast came as the army was also deployed on the streets of the capital Islamabad after thousands of protesters clashed with police in chaotic scenes, throwing stones and setting a container on fire.

The demonstrators were supporters of Mumtaz Qadri, who was hanged on February 29 for killing a Punjab governor over his call for blasphemy reform.

Analysts called the execution a “key moment” in Pakistan’s long battle against religious extremism.

But it has also exposed deep religious divisions in the country.

A military spokesman said the army had been deployed to secure the Red Zone around Parliament.

Nationwide, overall levels of militant violence have fallen since the army began a major offensive against Taliban and Al Qaeda strongholds in the country’s north-west border areas in 2014.

Last year saw the lowest number of civilian and security forces casualties since 2007, the year the umbrella Pakistani Taliban group was formed.

But militants are still able to carry out major attacks from time to time.

At least 16 people were killed and more than two dozen wounded when a bomb blew up inside a bus in Peshawar, the main city of Pakistan’s insurgency-wracked north-west, on March 16.

The blast in Lahore saw the highest number of casualties since a suicide bomber killed 55 people at the main Pakistan-India border crossing at Wagah in November 2014, an attack also claimed by the Jamat Ul Ahrar Taliban faction.

* Agence France-Presse