Army orders special combing operations after Quetta blast

Pakistan Army Chief General Raheel Sharif yesterday ordered special combing operations after a powerful explosion in a Quetta hospital left at least 70 people dead.
General Sharif told intelligence agencies to initiate “special combing operations to target those involved in terror attacks”, a spokesperson for the military said.
The army chief earlier chaired a high-level meeting that was attended by Balochistan Chief Minister Abdul Malik Baloch and the Commander of the Southern Command.
Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) quoted the army chief as saying that the bombing was specially targeted at the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
General Sharif also visited the injured at the Civil Hospital. Critically injured individuals were shifted to the Combined Military Hospital (CMH).
The ISPR said the injured were also being flown to Karachi.
Separately, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif condemned the attack and ordered authorities to tighten security.
He and the head of Pakistan’s powerful military visited Quetta to express their condolences.
Facebook activated its safety check for Quetta in the wake of the attack.
A suicide bomb packed with ball bearings tore through the hospital yesterday and killed at least 70 people, as witnesses described tearful staff rushing towards the smoking blast site to help the wounded.
The bomber struck a crowd of some 200 people gathered at the Civil Hospital in Quetta after the fatal shooting of a senior local lawyer earlier in the day.
More than 100 were wounded, officials said.
Video footage showed bodies strewn on the ground, some still smoking, among pools of blood and shattered glass as shocked survivors cried and comforted one another.
Many of the victims were clad in the black suits and ties traditionally worn by Pakistani lawyers.
An AFP journalist was about 20 metres away when the bomb went off.
“There were huge black clouds and dirt,” he said.
“I ran back to the place and saw dead bodies scattered everywhere and many injured people crying. There were pools and pools of blood around and pieces of human bodies and flesh.”
Nurses and lawyers wept as medics from inside the hospital rushed out to help dozens of injured, he said.
“People were beating their heads, crying and mourning. They were in shock and grief.”
Pervez Masi, who was injured by pieces of flying glass, said the blast was so powerful that “we didn’t know what had happened”.
“So many friends were martyred,” he said. “Whoever is doing this is not human, he is a beast and has no humanity.”
Police confirmed the attack was a suicide blast.
“The bomber had strapped some 8kilos of explosives packed with ball bearings and shrapnel on his body,” bomb disposal unit chief Abdul Razzaq said.
The Pakistani Taliban faction Jamaat-ur-Ahrar yesterday claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing.
“The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan Jamaat-ur-Ahrar takes responsibility for this attack, and pledges to continue carrying out such attacks. We will release a video report on this soon,” spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan said in an e-mail.
The Islamist movement is the same that carried out the Easter Day bombing the eastern city of Lahore in March that killed 72 people, many of them children, in a crowded park.
Balochistan, which borders Iran and Afghanistan, has major oil and gas resources but is afflicted by Islamist militancy, sectarian violence and a separatist insurgency.
“The death toll has risen to 70 and there are 112 injured,” the head of the provincial health department, Dr Masood Nausherwani, told reporters.
Officials said mobile phone jammers had been activated around hospitals in the area – a regular precaution after an attack – making it hard to contact officers on the ground to get updated information.
The crowd, mainly lawyers and journalists, had gone to the hospital after the death of the president of the Balochistan Bar Association in a shooting earlier yesterday, said provincial home secretary Akbar Harifal.
Bilal Anwar Kasi was targeted by two unidentified gunmen as he left his home for work.
Pakistan is grimly accustomed to atrocities after a nearly decade-long insurgency.
But security had markedly improved in 2015, when the death toll from militant attacks fell to its lowest since 2007.