TALIBAN SPLINTER GROUP CLAIMS ATTACK ON CHRISTIANS AT PAKISTAN PARK; 60 DEAD
Shaiq Hussain and Erin Cunningham
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A suicide blast claimed by Islamist militants ripped through crowds of families celebrating Easter at a park in the city of Lahore on Sunday, killing at least 60 people and injuring an additional 300 in an attack the jihadists said had deliberately targeted Christians.
The attack was carried out by a suicide bomber in the parking lot of Gulshan e-Iqbal Park about 6:30 in the evening, transforming a joyful scene of picnicking families into a spectacle of chaos and horror. Many children were among the dead, local officials said.
A spokesman for the Jamaat ul-Ahrar militant group, which is an offshoot of the Pakistani Taliban, asserted responsibility in a telephone interview Sunday.
“It was our people who attacked the Christians in Lahore, celebrating Easter,” the spokesman, Ehsanullah Ehsan, said. “It’s our message to the government that we will carry out such attacks again until sharia [Islamic law] is imposed in the country.”
Pakistan, a country of 190 million, has suffered for years from sectarian violence and Islamist militancy, including a Taliban-led insurgency in the tribal areas on the border with Afghanistan. Christians make up about 1 percent of Pakistan’s population but have maintained a larger presence in Lahore.
In Lahore, Parveen Masih, a 30-year-old Christian woman, said she had gone to the park with her husband and kids to celebrate Easter. They were there when the bomb exploded.
“This attack was about nothing other than to sabotage our happiness,” Masih, who was wounded in the face, said in a telephone interview. “We had only a few days to celebrate, and they didn’t even let us enjoy those.”
The government of Punjab province — where the attack occurred, and which is Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s political stronghold — announced three days of mourning. A statement from the office of Punjab’s chief minister, Shahbaz Sharif, who is the prime minister’s brother, pledged that the culprits would be brought to trial.
“Those who targeted innocent citizens do not deserve to be called humans,” Shahbaz Sharif posted on his Twitter account. “We will hunt you down,” he said. And “make sure your terror infrastructure is dismantled completely.”