Scores dead as Taliban Target Christians in Lahore

At least 65 people killed after Pakistan Taliban targets Christians in Easter Sunday suicide attack.

At least 65 people were killed and hundreds more injured in an apparent suicide bombing at a Pakistani park that an Islamic militant group said was aimed at Christians celebrating Easter.

A Pakistani Taliban faction claimed responsibility for the attack in Lahore, a city in the eastern part of the country with a sizeable Christian minority. Terrorists bombed two churches in the city last year, killing 12. Police said Sunday’s blast was near a play area for children.

Local television footage showed distraught parents running with injured children and ambulances ferrying the wounded to hospitals. An unnamed eyewitness on Pakistan’s Geo News channel said, “There was a sudden explosion. It was so loud that I felt a piercing pain in my ears.”

“This was a soft target, innocent people, women and children were hit,” said Haider Ashraf, deputy inspector general of police in Lahore. “It is like we’re in a state of war.”

Cecil Shane Chaudhry, executive director of the National Commission for Justice and Peace, an organisation that campaigns for human rights for minorities in Pakistan, said that the park that was attacked has long been a favourite for Christians during Easter.

“It’s tragic for the Christian community, yes, but for the nation too — for any citizen to not be able to take their family to the park. It’s become such a vulnerable situation now. One wonders what the next target will be,” Mr. Chaudhry said.

The Pakistani Taliban, which have been fighting with authorities for years, say they want to overthrow the Muslim-majority country’s government and impose strict Islamic rule. The group is aligned with al Qaeda, a rival to Islamic State, the terror organisation behind recent attacks in Europe.

Pakistani Taliban attacks have largely killed other Muslims. They have also targeted religious minorities, which make up about 5% of Pakistan’s population and includes two million Christians.

Sunday’s deadly bombing represents a significant setback for Pakistan’s security forces, which have been carrying out a stepped-up campaign against the Pakistani Taliban and other jihadist groups over the past two years. The park attack follows a terrorist assault on a university earlier this year that left 21 dead.

Lahore is the capital of Punjab province, the most populous part of the country, and it has been spared the worst of the violence wrought by extremists in other parts of the country, which is home to a large number of jihadist organisations.

“They may have martyred people today but they have not lessened our resolve to fight terrorism,” said Rana Sanaullah, law minister of Punjab.

Pakistan insists it is now fighting all militant groups “without discrimination.”

Washington in the past has accused the Pakistani military and its intelligence agency of only battling jihadist groups that attack Pakistan, and not those that fight in Afghanistan and India.

Ehsanullah Ehsan, a spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban’s Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, or freedom fighters group, called reporters and said his group had “carried out this blessed operation” that “targeted the Christian festival of Easter.”

A spokesman for the US National Security Council said the US “condemned in the strongest terms today’s appalling terrorist attack in Lahore.” He said the US would continue to work with its partners in Pakistan “to root out the scourge of terrorism.”

Pakistan has been fighting a Pakistani Taliban-led insurgency since 2007. In June 2014, the military launched a continuing operation against the group’s bases in the country’s tribal areas, which border Afghanistan.

Islamabad says the Pakistani Taliban, which has now splintered into different factions, is based in Afghanistan.

The main faction claimed responsibility for a 2014 gun-and-grenade assault on a school in the northwestern city of Peshawar, in which more than 130 children were killed. Another faction said it was behind this year’s university attack.

While emergency workers in Lahore struggled to help those injured in the park blast on Sunday, in Islamabad security forces clashed with demonstrators angry that a policeman had been executed after being found guilty of murdering a politician he accused of blasphemy.

Police fired tear gas in an effort to disperse the crowd of around 2,000 as marchers converged in front of Parliament.

“We are ready to die to protect the honour of the Prophet,” some chanted. Others yelled: “Behead those who insult the Prophet.”

The Wall St Journal