Explosion in Crowded Market Kills Dozens in Pakistan

By C. J. Refsland on February 17, 2013 • ( 0 )

KARACHI, Pakistan — A devastating explosion ripped through a crowded market in the western city of Quetta on Saturday, killing at least 63 people and wounding at least 180, the police said.

Banaras Khan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Pakistani paramedics on Saturday examined the bodies of bombing victims at a hospital in the western city of Quetta.

By DECLAN WALSH

The attack occurred in a neighborhood dominated by Hazaras, a Shiite ethnic minority that has suffered numerous attacks at the hands of Sunni militant death squads in recent years.

A previous attack on Jan. 10, when a Sunni group bombed a snooker hall in Quetta, killed almost 100 Hazaras, prompting domestic and international outrage.

The police said that Saturday’s bomb was apparently set off by a remote-controlled device, possibly hidden in a rickshaw. The explosion caused a building to collapse and the death toll to rise sharply.

Late Saturday, Mir Zubair Mehmood, the police chief of Quetta, said that the blast had killed at least 63 people and wounded at least 180. He said that the bomb contained 800 to 1,000 kilograms (as much as 2,220 pounds) of explosives. Local hospitals declared an emergency as rescue efforts were hampered by angry crowds at the bomb site, where distraught Hazaras prevented the police, reporters and rescuers from reaching the scene.

Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf quickly condemned the attack, emphasizing the government’s resolve to fight “such dastardly acts” and vowing to bring the perpetrators to justice.

But the seeming ease with which the bombers struck, just one month after a similar sectarian atrocity in the same city, underscored the inability of Pakistan’s security forces to counter the threat from extremist groups as the country moves toward general elections expected to take place by mid-May.

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