Home Latest News Islamic State Claims Quetta Fruit Market Bombing

Islamic State Claims Quetta Fruit Market Bombing

by AFP

Banaras Khan—AFP

Militant group’s claim follows a similar one from the Pakistani Taliban

The Islamic State militant group claimed responsibility for a suicide blast in Quetta on Friday that killed 20 people and left 48 more injured.

The group released a photograph of the bomber along with his name on Saturday and said the attack targeted Shia Muslims.

On Friday, a little known faction of the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the blast, saying it collaborated with Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), which has been behind numerous bloody attacks on Shia Muslims in Pakistan.

Pakistani officials deny Islamic State is present in the country, but the group has claimed a number of attacks in the past.

Ethnic Hazara make up most of the Shia population in Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province—the country’s largest and poorest region, rife with ethnic, sectarian and separatist insurgencies.

The Hazara peoples’ Central Asian features make them easily recognizable and they are a soft target for Sunni militants, who consider them heretics. They are so frequently targeted they are forced to live in two protected enclaves in the city and are given a daily police escort to the market to stock up on supplies.

Dozens of people including women and children belonging to the Hazara community continued a sit-in on one of the city’s major roads on Saturday, demanding the arrest of those behind the bombing.

Amnesty International, in a statement on Friday said the blast was a “painful reminder” of the many attacks suffered by the Hazara community in Quetta over the years. It also called for the government of Prime Minister Imran Khan to give them better protection.

“Each time, there are promises that more will be done to protect them, and each time those promises have failed to materialize,” wrote Omar Waraich, Amnesty’s deputy director for South Asia.

Violence in Pakistan has dropped significantly since the country’s deadliest-ever militant attack—an assault on a school in Peshawar in 2014 that killed more than 150 people, most of them children.

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