Pakistan mourns bombing victims

Pakistani lawyers offer funeral prayers for their colleagues killed in a Monday bombing in Quetta, under tight security, outside the Supreme Court building in Islamabad, Pakistan, Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2016. Pakistani lawyers are mourning colleagues slain in a shocking suicide bombing the previous day in the southwestern city of Quetta that killed scores of people, mostly lawyers. (AP Photo/B.K. Bangash)

Pakistani lawyers offer funeral prayers for their colleagues killed in a Monday bombing in Quetta, outside the Supreme Court building in Islamabad, Pakistan, Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2016. Pakistani lawyers are mourning colleagues slain in a shocking suicide bombing the previous day in the southwestern city of Quetta that killed and wounded scores of people, mostly lawyers. (AP Photo/B.K. Bangash)

Pakistani security troops stand guard outside the Supreme Court as people gather to pray for victims of a bomb blast Monday in Quetta, in Islamabad, Pakistan, Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2016. Pakistani lawyers are mourning colleagues slain in a shocking suicide bombing the previous day in the southwestern city of Quetta that killed and wounded scores of people, mostly lawyers. (AP Photo/B.K. Bangash)

Pakistani civil society activists light candles Peshawar, Pakistan, to pay tribute to the victims of a bombing in Quetta, Monday. (Associated Press)

Pakistani civil society activists light candles in Peshawar to pay tribute to the victims of bombing in Quetta Monday, Aug. 8, 2016. The bomber killed dozens of people and wounded many others in an attack that struck a gathering of Pakistani lawyers on the grounds of a government-run hospital in the southwestern city of Quetta on Monday, police and doctors said. (AP Photo/Mohammad Sajjad)

Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif talks to a survivor of a bombing with Pakistani army chief Gen. Raheel Sharif, right, at a hospital in Quetta, Pakistan, Monday, Aug. 8, 2016. The bomber killed dozens of people and wounded many others in an attack that struck a gathering of Pakistani lawyers on the grounds of a government-run hospital in the southwestern city of Quetta on Monday, police and doctors said. (AP Photo/Arshad Butt)

People rally to condemn a bombing in Quetta that killed dozens of people, in Lahore, Pakistan, Monday, Aug. 8, 2016. The bomber killed dozens of people and wounded many others in an attack that struck a gathering of Pakistani lawyers on the grounds of a government-run hospital in the southwestern city of Quetta on Monday, police and doctors said. Placrad at bottom reads "what we do, no place is safe." (AP Photo/K.M. Chaudary)

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By Abdul Sattar and Munir Ahmed (Associated Press)

QUETTA, Pakistan — Many Pakistanis were in deep mourning on Tuesday, a day after a suicide bombing that targeted lawyers killed 70 people in the city of Quetta, touching a chord in the country’s long-simmering culture war. By targeting lawyers, Islamic radicals appeared to take aim at a pillar of the country’s budding civil society — and a symbol of the supremacy of secular law in a modern state.

Across the country, many courts were closed and lawyers staged rallies in support of their colleagues.

But in Quetta, the capital of the southwestern province of Baluchistan, the streets were deserted. Shops were shuttered, and markets and schools closed to mourn those killed. “People are scared, and they ask, ‘for how long the violence will continue?’” said Mohammad Saleem, who works at the market.

Senior attorney Mohammad Ashraf stood with several fellow lawyers outside a Quetta court building, a spot where he had often gathered for breaks with many of the lawyers killed in the bombing. The perpetrators “cannot be called humans,” he said with anger. “We request that the government tracks down and punishes all those who killed innocent lawyers and other people,” he added.

Tariq Lodhi, a former head of Pakistan’s main civil spy agency, told The Associated Press that the attack was carried out by militants to “terrorize lawyers and judges,” who are handling cases involving militants accused of carrying out attacks in the country.

A prominent local lawyer, Bilal Kasi, the president of the Baluchistan Bar Association, was on his way to work when he was shot dead by gunmen early Monday. After his death, around 100 lawyers gathered at Quetta’s government-run Civil Hospital, where a suicide bomber attacked those mourning.

Survivors later described scenes of panic as the blast ripped through the emergency room.

Two journalists who had been covering the event for Pakistani TV were killed, but many of the dead and wounded were lawyers.

In a statement, Ahsanullah Ahsan, a spokesman for the Jamaat-ul-Ahrar — a breakaway faction of the militant Taliban group — said its fighters killed Kasi and dozens of lawyers at the hospital. Ahsan’s group has been behind several attacks in Pakistan in recent years, including a deadly Easter Sunday bombing in a park in the eastern city of Lahore that killed at least 70 people.

But in what was likely an opportunistic statement, the Islamic State group also claimed responsibility for the Quetta attack later on Monday. There have been instances of competing claims in previous attacks in Pakistan.

It was not the first time that militants in Pakistan have targeted lawyers. Last year, gunmen in the northwestern city of Peshawar killed Samiullah Khan Afridi, a former lawyer for the Pakistani doctor who helped the U.S. find Osama bin Laden. Earlier this year, the son of the supreme chief justice of Sindh High Court was kidnapped, and a suicide bomb attack outside a courtroom in Pakistan’s northeast killed 11 people in March.

The Quetta bombing was, however, the deadliest attack to hit Pakistan’s legal community.